FUEL PRICE INCREASES Quest for cheaper gas leads to rise in Web traffic

One site, Gasbuddy.com, compiles gas-station prices reported by users nationwide.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- A new service from Verizon Wireless lets customers use cell phones to search for the cheapest, closest gas stations. To get FuelFinder, subscribers have to pay $1.99 a month, in addition to a $5 monthly Web access fee.
But what's a few bucks, if you can save a few cents?
"It saves people from having to drive for miles to look for cheap gas," Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson said.
Sharing information on how to deal with gasoline prices has driven huge amounts of traffic on Web sites in recent weeks, as drivers fume, exchange tips on where to buy gas and increase fuel efficiency and even gather online to pray for lower gas prices.
Popular sites
Last month, gas-price-tracking Web sites posted some of highest growth in traffic on the Internet, according to ComScore Media Metrix. The most popular, Gasbuddy.com, compiles user-reported prices at stations around the country, and got 2.3 million visitors in April, up from 755,000 in March. The Energy Department's site, Fueleconomy.com, saw a 172 percent increase the same month.
Gasbuddy.com now gets from 1 million to 1.5 million visitors a day, and hosts forums on which 16 million messages have been posted, said Jason Toews, a co-founder of the organization, based in Brooklyn Park, Minn..
There, in addition to kvetching about cost, people hold forth about alternative fuels, suggest taking heavy loads out of the car to save gas and advocate driving slower on the highway to get better gas mileage.
"I've noticed people are driving slower," said Toews, who said it's possible to increase the efficiency of a car by 20 percent by going 55 mph instead of 75.
Other sites -- such as GasPriceWatch.com, Gaswatch, GasPriceAlert, and the Utility Consumers' Action Network's Gasoline Price Tracking Service -- also help consumers comparison shop, sometimes by compiling data from customers themselves who report to the site. FuelFinder compiles data reported by gas stations and credit card companies and the service allows subscribers to choose among unleaded, premium midgrade or diesel prices.
Search engines also provide an increasingly popular way to find fuel-related information. Internet searches for the term ethanol increased 212 percent from April to May, according to another research company, Hitwise. Searches for biodiesel increased 100 percent during the same period.
During the past month, Yahoo Inc. said the number of searches on its site for gas prices and hybrids increased 250 percent, peaking in the last week of April, coinciding with the peaking of gas prices and Earth Day on April 22.
On the Internet overall, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. -- two Japanese automakers that make hybrid cars -- saw a boost in Web site visitors in April, according to ComScore, with traffic on those pages up 49 percent and 33 percent, respectively, over the previous month.
Verizon hopes to cut through such informal efforts with FuelFinder, the cell-phone service, which allows users to type in a ZIP code or town name to pull up a map and a short list of nearby stations, starting with the cheapest.