Counter.nn.ru — a Nizhny Novgorod free internet statistics system and consolidated rating of the region's websites, which operated from 2000 to 2016. The concept and technical specification were by Ilya Osipov; the system was implemented by a programmer of the company NN.RU, Alexey Pavlov. For sixteen years counter.nn.ru was the principal gauge of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: hundreds of local sites — from corporate pages to personal projects — checked their traffic against its counter.

History

The system opened in early 2000 under the name "NN COUNTER v.2000" with the subtitle "Nizhny Novgorod free statistics system"; in March 2000 the home page still carried a warning that "the new statistics system is being debugged".[1] By the spring of its first year 392 sites were taking part in the rating, split into eight categories: Companies, Projects, Personalities, Science and education, Government, Society, Directories and Media.[1]

The counter was built into the ecosystem of the NN.RU portal: in the portal's directory every catalogued site carried a live link "Rating: N" leading to that site's statistics page on counter.nn.ru. In the spring of 2004 the system suffered a technical failure with loss of data — operation was restored by May; the notice about it stayed on the home page until the following year.[3]

Over time the rating outgrew its initial structure: it became the "Consolidated Nizhny Novgorod rating", divided into companies, projects and private pages, with filters "by Nizhny Novgorod residents" and "by all visitors" and a directory by field of activity.[3] By January 2016 the sections listed thousands of sites — "Auto/Moto", for example, numbered 617 participants, and "Construction and repair" 858 — while the statistics continued to be updated daily.[4]

How the rating worked

Participation was free: a site owner registered through the "Add site" form, placed the counter code on their pages and entered the general rating and their own category. Traffic and the "rating" — a composite figure by which the TOP100 tables were sorted — were counted.[2] Statistics pages for each participant were published separately; it is precisely these tables that today remain the fullest cross-section of what the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the turn of the 2000s consisted of.

Closure

The last working snapshot of the system in the web archive is dated October 2016; from November 2016 the counter stopped opening.[4] Later a placeholder appeared on the domain: "The counter.nn.ru site is closed. We will remember it fondly;)" — it has been hanging there ever since.[5]

Significance

The archived tables of counter.nn.ru are one of the main sources of information about closed Nizhny Novgorod websites: the snapshot of 2000 preserved a list of 392 addresses operating at the time (see the category "Closed websites and media projects"). Alongside counter.nn.ru there lived other tools of the era — the catalogue on the NN.RU home page and the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet))" award; together they form a documentary base on the history of the local network.

The home page through the years

Links

Encyclopedia research: Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — NN COUNTER v.2000 — snapshot of 1 March 2000 (archived)
  2. web.archive.org — snapshot of 2 December 2000 (archived)
  3. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod statistics system — snapshot of 4 March 2010 (archived)
  4. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod statistics system — snapshot of 11 January 2016 (archived)
  5. web.archive.org — snapshot of 1 February 2022 (archived)