Can you provide a list of 40 - 50 web sites, located in the United
States, that sell acoustic and electric guitars and accept payment
online?  Can you rank the sites by their popularity.

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Clarification of Question by bodaboyce-ga on 05 Jan 2004 15:05 PST

If the List Price is not sufficient to cover the requested research, I
am willing to increase the amount by 50%.

On the other hand, if the question isn't sufficiently clear, I would
be willing to drop the second half of the query.

Hi there,

The best list of online guitar stores can be found via Open Directory:


Shopping: Music: Instruments
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Music/Instruments/

Shopping: Music: Instruments: Stringed: Guitar
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Music/Instruments/Stringed/Guitar/

However the results are listed alphabetically, without any form of
ranking determined. Aside from occasional press releases from
companies that sell ranking data, there is no perfect way of assessing
the relative popularity of websites in such a narrow category.  The
best two means are using Alexa and Google PageRank. Both of these can
be combined with the Open Directory data.


Google PageRank
---------------
PageRank is Google's measurement of a webpage's popularity, based on
how many other pages link to it. Google Directory uses the Open
Directory data, but ranks sites by PageRank.

Shopping: Music: Instruments
http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Music/Instruments/

Shopping: Music: Instruments: Stringed: Guitar
http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Music/Instruments/Stringed/Guitar/


Alexa
-----
Alexa determines ranking according to the number of people using the
Alexa Toolbar that visit a site. It also has a directory that
originates from Open Directory. The list of sites is the same as
Google Directory, but listed in a different order, based on a
different criteria for determining popularity.

Shopping: Music: Instruments
http://www.alexa.com/browse/general?catid=27921&mode=general

Shopping: Music: Instruments: Stringed: Guitar 
http://www.alexa.com/browse/general?catid=1405&mode=general



Of the two I prefer Alexa. Here are the top US sites that sell guitars
online - I have used the Alexa lists and removed sites that do not
sell online, then ranked them by Alexa Traffic Rank:



Top 36 US Sites that Sell Guitars Online - According to Alexa
=============================================================


Musician's Friend 
2,001 
http://www.fqms.com/

Music 123 
6,426 
http://www.music123.com/

Sam Ash 
15,682
http://www.samash.com/home/

Guitar Trader 
36,516 
http://www.guitartrader.com/

Music Yo 
60,969 
http://www.musicyo.com/

Brook Mays 
65,577 
http://www.brookmays.com/

Musician's Buy 
72,867 
http://www.musiciansbuy.com/

8th Street 
83,944 
http://www.8thstreet.com/

Interstate Music 
143,799 
http://www.interstatemusic.com/

Freeport Music 
196,457
http://www.musicalinstruments.com/

Andy's Music 
248,605 
http://www.andysmusiconline.com/

Vintage Music / Guitar Auction
372,358 
http://guitarauction.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi

GuitarPlaza.com
372,400 
http://www.guitarplaza.com/

GuitarShop.net 
393,708 
http://www.guitarshop.net/

Steve's Music Center
449,730 
http://www.stevesmusiccenter.com/

Humbucker Music 
491,055 
http://www.humbuckermusic.com/

East Coast Music Mall 
633,923 
http://www.eastcoastmusicmall.com/

The Music Store 
679,865
http://www.musicstoreinc.com/

Sounds Great Music
700,489 
http://www.soundsgreatmusic.com/

Guitar Asylum
705,906 
http://www.guitarasylum.com/

Guitar Stop
739,110 
http://www.guitarstop.com/

Big Guitar
825,857 
http://shop.timwebworks.com/bg_usr1/

The Trading Musician
916,362 
http://www.tradingmusician.com/

Pignose
1,412,188 
http://www.pignose.com/

Allen Music Shop 
1,529,970
http://www.allenmusicshop.com/

Mann Music 
1,582,048 
http://www.mannmusic.com/

West World Music 
1,597,459 
http://www.westworldmusic.com

Pulse Music 
1,834,730 
http://www.pulseonline.com/

Cool Cat Music
1,874,746
http://www.coolcatmusic.com

Music Shack 
1,972,245 
http://www.musicshack.net/

Market Street Music 
2,616,671
http://www.marketstreetmusic.com/

Music Genie 
3,761,896 
http://www.musicgenie.com/

Guitar Finder
3,992,664 
http://www.guitarfinder.com/

Guitar Merchant
4,598,518 
http://www.guitarmerchant.com/

GuitarWeb 
no data
http://members.ebay.com./aboutme/guitarweb

Music Lovers 
no data
http://www.musicloversshoppe.com/




Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by bodaboyce-ga on 06 Jan 2004 11:30 PST

Dear Robert.

Thank you for an excellent response . . . it is exactly the kind of
information I am looking for.  May I ask in clarification how the
ranking was established from Alexa data.  It seems to reflect the rank
of the website against all sites measured by Alexa.  Am I correct, and
is the Traffic Rank info available to me through the link you
provided?

In my first clarification I offered to increase the "list price" to
$15.  I am happy to pay that amount for your answers, including a well
deserved 5 stars.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by bodaboyce-ga on 06 Jan 2004 11:48 PST

Robert . . .

Another clarification request, if you please.

The first entry "Musician's Friend", ranked at 2001, is accompanied by
a link; "http://www.fqms.com", a link to First Quality Music Service,
which site does not otherwise appear in your ranked list ???  What is
the correct ranking of these two sites?

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Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 06 Jan 2004 17:36 PST

Alexa Rankings
--------------
You can view Alexa rankings for individual sites by either:

Installing the Alexa Toolbar
http://download.alexa.com/alexa7/startpage.html

...or searching for the URL (just enter it in their Google search box)
http://www.alexa.com/

...or directly into your browser, just change where it says
"google.com" to the address of the site in question:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=google.com


Alexa gets their data from 10 million people who have installed the Alexa Toolbar.

"Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa
Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based
on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by
the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day.
Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site.
However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the
same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest
combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

Alexa's traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g.
domain.com). We do not provide seperate rankings for subpages within a
domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g.
subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify
them as personal home pages, like those hosted on Geocities and
Tripod."
http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=1

Oops
----
Apologies for the wrong link, Musician's Friend is at:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com

First Quality Music Service was in the long original list, but they do
not have online guitar sales.

Exactly as needed, with further, excellent, clarification.  I
appreciate the effort that went into my request.  Thanks, Robert