big-z.narod.ru is the site of the Nizhny Novgorod firm Zorro Ltd., listed in the nn.ru directory, the catalogue of Nizhny Novgorod websites, as "big-Z Consultant"[4]. The site offered businesses of Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod Oblast consultations on foreign economic activity, customs clearance for export and import, and freight trucking[1][2]. At the bottom of the page stood the signature "Zorro Ltd (c) 2001. design MightyMike"[1][2]; the last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated October 2022[3].

What the site looked like

The home page opened with the letter-spaced "b i g - Z", the line "zorro international group" and the greeting "welcome to the Zorro Ltd. website!"[2]. Below was the project's purpose, as the site itself put it: "consultations on foreign economic activity for nizhny novgorod and nizhny novgorod oblast"[2]. No prices were given on the page: "please contact us regarding terms" — followed by a phone number and an email address[2]. In the 2002 snapshot the contact phone was recorded as "+7 831 9041765", in the 2022 snapshots as "+7 904-399-31-24"; the email address zorroltd@mailru.com did not change over twenty years[1][2]. The page's meta description read "Services in Nizhny Novgorod for customs clearance and conclusion of foreign trade…", and the keywords read "customs, customs clearance, GTK, GTD, declaration…"; both survived unchanged to the last snapshots[1][2].

The content consisted of two blocks of services, a "send message" feedback form[2], and a link to the "corporate site of Zorro Group"[1]. The first block, "customs clearance (export-import)", listed[2]:

  • checking the correctness of a foreign trade contract's execution at the conclusion stage — delivery terms, payment terms;
  • customs clearance of goods: customs and currency legislation, Russia's Commodity Nomenclature of Foreign Economic Activity (TN VED), drawing up declarations, customs regimes, preliminary operations;
  • issuing a certificate of origin under form "ST-1" at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast — for exported goods;
  • issuing a certificate of conformity (safety) for goods at state certification bodies — the Nizhny Novgorod Center for Standardization and Metrology — for imported goods;
  • currency control by banks, execution of transaction passports;
  • licenses for capital currency operations at the Main Directorate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation — for contracts where payment or receipt of goods extends beyond 90 days;
  • reporting on currency transactions to authorized banks and the Main Directorate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation;
  • translation of shipping and banking documents, business correspondence.

The second block, "cargo transport", fit into two sentences: freight transport under an international license, and "the fleet consists of truck-trailers meeting EURO 2 emission standards, with a useful volume of 83 cubic meters"[2]. The home page gave no office address, no employee names, and no client list — the whole firm was represented by a phone number, a mailbox, and a list of what it could arrange[1][2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site made it into the nn.ru directory under two sections of "Firms (Enterprises)" at once: "Various Services" and "Auto: Taxis and Freight Transport"[4][5]. The description in both matched word for word, typo included: "Customs clearance, freight transport (truck-trailers)"[4][5]. For sites hooked up to the counter, the directory showed a rating next to the entry via Counter.nn.ru; for big-Z the link led to counter number 2228[4][5].

The numbers on this rating were small and changed from snapshot to snapshot. On the "Various Services" section page, generated on April 25, 2002, big-Z stood at 2.04 — against 20.04 for the top entry ("Biznes-Kniga Store"), 18.52 for "Paintball Center", and 6.75 for the nearest neighbor on the list, "Avia Cargo Service"[4]. On the "Taxis and Freight Transport" section page from August 16, 2002 — 5, against 86 for the top entry ("ROSPROKAT"), 49 for "IZOTRANS — Cargo Delivery", and 46 for "Scania — VolgaScan"[5]. In the final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the site does not appear[6]. In other words, this is the lower tier of the regional rating: a business-card site of a firm, of which there were hundreds in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).

Fate of the address

The web archive's index for the domain holds 19 records: the first snapshot of the home page was taken on September 16, 2002, the last — in October 2022[1][3]. Over these twenty years the text barely changed: the same list of services, the same 83 cubic meters and EURO 2, the same meta description in the page header, and the same "Zorro Ltd (c) 2001" signature[1][2]. The differences are minor: the landline phone number became a mobile one, the Russian caption of the "corporate site of Zorro Group" link became the English "corporate site Zorro Group", and the line "zorro international group" appeared in the header — it is absent from the text preserved from 2002[1][2]. The page, laid out, judging by the copyright notice, in 2001, stood nearly untouched until 2022: it was neither redesigned nor taken down, just left as it was.

All four saved snapshots from 2022 — from March 30, April 1, June 14, and October 5 — match word for word[2][7][8][3]. No new snapshots have appeared in the web archive after October 2022. When checked in August 2026, the site at this address was responding. The address of the corporate Zorro Group site the link pointed to also cannot be recovered from the snapshots of the home page: only the caption remains.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, September 16, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, March 30, 2022 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, October 5, 2022 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, section "Firms (Enterprises): Various Services", April 25, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, section "Firms (Enterprises): Auto: Taxis and Freight Transport", August 16, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, April 1, 2022 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Home page, June 14, 2022 (archive)