rocksearch.virtualave.net — an English-language search engine for rock music, RockSearch, which operated from September 2000 to the end of 2003[1]. The project had no domain of its own: it occupied a third-level address on the third-party host virtualave.net, outside the Nizhny Novgorod zones. Even so, the site was part of the Nizhny Novgorod segment of the network: it was listed in the Counter.nn.ru counter, where it appeared under the Russian name "RockSearch — Поисковик по рок-музыке" ("RockSearch — a search engine for rock music")[2], and it was entered in the nn.ru directory, which billed itself as a "directory of Nizhny Novgorod sites" — there under the name "Guitar Homepage" with the description "Обучение игре на гитаре" ("Learning to play guitar")[3]. Besides the music section, the directory also listed it under "Society and Nizhny Novgorodians: Personal pages of Nizhny Novgorodians: Pages about anything"[4]. The home page was signed "HardRock Stage, 2000"[1].

What was on the site

RockSearch was conceived as a topical search engine: in the page's service description, its author called it a full-text search across everything connected with rock bands and performers — tablatures, guitar lessons, chords, song lyrics, images[1]. The Russian description in the counter listed the same things: tablatures, song lyrics, chords, guitar lessons, information about rock musicians, photographs, and music in MIDI format[2].

The centerpiece of the home page was a search box with example prompts such as "pink floyd wish you were here tab", "queen lyrics", "c7sus4 chord"[1]. As the home page reported, the index held "756 handpicked pages indexed"[1]. Below were the sections: lyrics, tablatures and chords, multimedia and MIDI, guitar lessons and tips, official band sites, fan sites. In the first three sections, bands were arranged into four alphabetical ranges — A–H, I–M, N–T, U–Z[1]. The directory itself, however, never went live: as the home page stated, "Directory is under construction now," leaving visitors only the full-text search form[1].

Free space on the page was taken up by affiliate blocks: a daily guitarist's tip from the TipWorld mailing list, an invitation to subscribe to the BMG Music Service music bulletin, an offer to buy posters and photo albums, a link to free offers. Feedback was reduced to two links, "Suggest A Site" and "Feedback," repeated at the top and bottom of the page[1]. The home page carried no address, phone number, or owner's name; the entire interface was in English — the project aimed at a worldwide audience and remained "Nizhny Novgorod" only by its registration in local directories[5].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

Autumn 2000 was RockSearch's period of greatest visibility. In a surviving snapshot of the counter.nn.ru overall rating from September 30, 2000, it held fourth place: counter 27,781, rating 366.81, 217 hits[6]. In the "Projects" section table from November 10, 2000, it stood eighth with a counter of 40,107, a rating of 242.58, and 141 hits — in the same list as "Nizhny Novgorod OnLine," the "Mp3 Collection," and the "Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Hub"[2]. By December 17, 2000, the counter already showed 46,593, but the site had dropped to eleventh place, with 18 hits for the day; ahead of it in the same section was a thematic competitor — the site "Tablatures and Chords of Foreign Rock Bands"[7]. A general account of how this counter worked and what it measured is examined in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the nn.ru directory, the listing outlasted the site itself. In the snapshot from April 25, 2002, "Guitar Homepage" stood in the "Projects: Music" and "Personal pages of Nizhny Novgorodians" sections with a rating of 30.91[3][4], and in the snapshot from September 16, 2003 — with a rating of 43[8]. The directory kept showing the site to Nizhny Novgorodians even after it had stood untouched for three years.

How it closed

RockSearch did not so much close as freeze. The snapshot from November 27, 2001 and the snapshot from December 27, 2003 match word for word, down to the last line: the same count of "756 handpicked pages," the same perpetually under-construction directory, the same "HardRock Stage, 2000" signature[5][9]. The last home-page snapshot in the web archive is dated December 27, 2003[9]. In the surviving results table for the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, the site no longer appears[10].

A story typical of the early Nizhny Novgorod Internet: a solo project on someone else's hosting, built by an enthusiast riding a wave of interest in the topic, six months of growth, then a halt — and three more years during which the page hung on the web while the directories dutifully kept listing it.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru rating, "Projects" section, November 2000 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Projects: Music" section, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Personal pages of Nizhny Novgorodians" section, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru rating, overall rating, September 2000 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru rating, "Projects" section, December 2000 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Projects: Music" section, 2003 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — Voting results, Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)