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History of AutoOnInfo.net
For much of the 2000s, AutoOnInfo.net has
been a leading provider of automobile reliability and durability
information. Much of the information has been presented in
tables – sometimes tables with rows in the hundreds – and
charts. The charts have a signature yellow background with a
green border.
James B. Bleeker is the web designer and
web master of the site.
History
The history of Auto on Info may be divided
into two periods. The early period, which was one of growth, and the
more recent period, which has been one of consolidation and
condensation.
The Early Years
Auto on Info was published to the Internet
on April 29, 2001 using the domain name AutoOnInfo.net. The
site's initial features included the Auto Reliability Index, an
automobile reliability measure with a scale of -1.00 to 1.00,
rating motor vehicle models in the age range range 6-to-8 years,
several rosters for high mileage vehicles, a section on
automobile durability, questionnaires for gathering auto quality
data, and the 2001 Auto Review. The Internet's archival Wayback
Machine* first recorded the
home page of AutoOnInfo.net on
January 22, 2002, the
menu Auto Reliability Index page on April
22, 2002, the
menu Galleries and Rosters page on June 4, 2001,
the
menu Durability Information page on June 13, 2002, and
"Graphing the Drift" page of the 2001 Auto Review on February 2,
2002, which includes a histogram of reliability improvements and
setbacks. The total Wayback Machine recordings of the home page is
46, the menu Auto Reliability Index page is 34, the menu
Galleries and Rosters page is 32, and the menu Durability
Information page is 25.
On July 9, 2001, a news section was added
to the AutoOnInfo.net site. The first Wayback recording of the
car news menu page was October 1, 2001 and the total number of
recordings is 34. The first article was entitled "The
Reliability Index Gap between Toyota and the Big Three Remains
Unchanged: Seven Years of -.6." The first recording of this page
was on December 25, 2001. The tables were characteristic of the
early tables, and the bar graph in this article exhibited some
of what was to become the signature colors of Auto on Info.
In the first year of Auto on Info's
presence on the web, it received
several awards. It received the
Critical Mass Award on August 31, 2001 for "content
that is informative, entertaining, presented well and easy to
access," the Spider Food Top Rank on October 14, 2001 for
its top ten search engine rankings, and the Open Directory's
Cool Site Award on January 1, 2002 for information that "is
unique and useful." The Wayback Machine first recorded
the Website Awards Received page on October 21, 2001 and offers
30 recordings of the page.
In April 2002, the Auto Reliability
Percentrank was introduced. The Auto Reliability Percentrank is
a model reliability rating over a 2-year consecutive period on a
scale of 0 to 1. This reliability rating was computed for each
model year of each model offering the requisite data, and
required 2 consecutive years of Consumer Reports' reliability
tables. The
Reliability Percentrank menu page was first recorded
on August 2, 2002 and has 32 recordings. The Reliability Percentranks are currently housed on
CarsOnInfo.net, a sister
site to AutoOnInfo.net.
On April 19, 2003, the domain name
AutoOnInfo.info was acquired as a second domain name to host the
Auto on Info website. The Wayback Machine first recorded the
home page of AutoOnInfo.info on June 15, 2003 and offers 56
recordings of the page.
In 2004, the
top
ten universities by AutoOnInfo.net page views were the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (with 190 page views), State University of New York
at Stony Brook (187 page views), Insituto Tecnologico y de
Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (176 page views), Purdue
University (162 page views), University of Texas at
Austin (160 page views), Ohio State University (137 page views),
University of Rochester (127 page views), University of
Washington (124 page views), University of Minnesota (110 page
views), and Yale University (109 page views).
In the week of December 25-31, 2005,
AutoOnInfo.net had 5,990 visitors on 4,274 referrals. Of the
4,274 referrals, 567 were from google.com, 277 from
search.yahoo.com, 135 from ask.com, and 91 from search.msn.com.
In the week of December 24-30, 2006, AutoOninfo.net had 7,825
visitors on 5,291 referrals. Of the 5,291 referrals, 134 were
from search.msn.com, 83 from search.yahoo.com, 71 from
google.com, 31 from search.live.com, and 19 from ask.com. Both
visitors and referrals had increased in the last week of 2006
over the year earlier period, but visitations from word searches
on search engines had significantly declined.1
In 2007, Auto on Info's Reliability
Percentrank Averages were cited in the
academic article "Foreign
Market Entry and Expansion - Directions for Strategic
Organizational Growth Based on a Global System Perspective."
Through 2009, the Wayback Machine had made
12,934 recordings of AutoOnInfo.net's files.
The Current Period
In April 2010, Auto on Info underwent many
changes. These included a reduction in size by eliminating
several sections, including the news and mini-survey sections, a
listing of only the top 25 high mileage holders from its high
high mileage rosters, a switch to the Auto Reliability Grade
Point Average as its primary measure of auto reliability, and a
switch to ASPX pages with partial feedback technology that
permits convenient reordering of table columns.
Notes and References
*The archival Wayback Machine did not record all
GIF images at each page recording, so GIF images shown on a
retrieved page may be much older or newer than the page and may
be distorted in appearance due to changes in size as model years
of auto reliability statistics were added.
1Mind Tremor Web Stats, "Weekly Stats for
Autooninfo.net," 1 Jan 2006 09:00:38 -0600 and Mind Tremor Web Stats, "Weekly Stats for
Autooninfo.net, " Sunday, December 31, 2006 9:01 AM.
AutoOnInfo.net: The auto-quality website with the
Open Directory Cool Site Award.
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