Hitwise US recently released their list of Top 25 Popular Websites.  Toping the list is the social-networking megasite MySpace.  Several of MySpace's service sites, such as MySpace Blogs and MySpace Mail also appear on the list.  Competing social-network site Facebook made the list as well, albeit at No. 14.  eBay, Pogo, MapQuest, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Bank of America round out the non-search related websites to make the cut.

The remaining sites on the Hitwise list include search engines, search portals, and the related services they offer, such as Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail, Google and Gmail, etc.

Your mission for the day, should you choose to accept it, is to spend an hour or so browsing the sites in this list.  You may have visited Yahoo! or Gmail in the past.  But your goal this time isn't to use the service, per say.  Spend some time looking at design elements, layouts, and the "little things" that make the site usable.

You should be able to learn two things from your stint at each site:

1. What are they doing that you could do on your site
2. What do they all have in common that any "top site" should have

Maybe you can't offer free email service or social networking at your site.  But you can implement design elements and other functionality into your current offering.  If you're lucky you can find a philosophy statement or similar document that actually outlines the approach that company takes to their service.

You might not be able to become the next Google.  But you may very well be able to become "Google-like".