This time last year, the average price of gas in Ohio was $1.797 per gallon for regular. Yesterday it was $2.17, according to the AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge, which tracks the average gas prices across the country.

Although an army of consumers probably can’t make the price of gas come down, it can help you find the cheapest gas around.

That’s because volunteer “price spotters,” armed with a keen eye and a computer, help keep the information on GasBuddy.com, which runs AkronGasPrices.com, as up to the minute as possible.

The Web site tracks the price of gas at area stations. Price spotters post the prices with a time stamp, so visitors know when they were last updated.

Visitors can see the area’s lowest and highest prices posted in the last 60 hours. The prices can be sorted by city, company or type of gas, so users can compare only what’s relevant for them.

According to AkronGasPrices.com, the cheapest gas in the Akron area yesterday was $1.95 per gallon for regular. The most expensive price came in at $2.29 per gallon.

GasBuddy.com was founded in June of 2000, and since then it’s expanded to include 173 local sites, like AkronGasPrices.com and ClevelandGasPrices.com. With volunteer “price spotters” — 390,000 of them across the United States and Canada — the site’s popularity has grown mostly by word of mouth, said Jason Toews, co-founder of GasBuddy.com.

“If gas was cheaper, it wouldn’t matter so much,” sophomore business major Jason Likover said, “but with the price of gas today, I’d use (the site) a lot.”

Sophomore biology major Eric Brokos said he’d check the site out but wouldn’t drive too far out of his way to save a few cents.

“If I knew I was going to get gas and I knew I was going out, I’d definitely go there first,” Brokos said. “But, it’s got to be a significant difference (to go out of the way); otherwise, you’re spending more money on gas to get there.”

Likover, however, said he’d “drive the extra mile to get cheaper gas.”

“I don’t think two or three cents would matter, but if it were 10 cents difference, I’d definitely drive the extra mile to get it.”

The site still gets a lot of traffic even when gas prices aren’t as expensive as they are now, Toews said.

“Even when gas prices are low, you can still save a lot of money,” he said. “We don’t expect people to drive way out of their way to save money, but it’s fairly easy to drive a few blocks and save 10 cents.”

Contact technology reporter Meranda Watling at [email protected].