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.