Here’s a curious and possibly useful new tool, if you use it with a grain of salt. Command Shift 3 has created a rating site that lets you peer into the mysterious depths of the collective web psyche. It’s a little like Google Zeitgeist for web site design, but more specific and less useful. Now you can see what the mob thinks of the current state of web site design and even submit your own site for rating.

Is it Useful? Maybe…

In general you can get a feel for what’s popular in site design today. Although this is, admittedly, only a little helpful since raters are encouraged to judge quickly with little to go on.

If you want to understand what people think makes a great looking website, this can definitely give you a certain type of insight. There is something to be said for the first 5 seconds a new visitor sees your site and attempts to place it into their master list of fantastic versus utter crud. In this case the aggregate attitude is interesting to see, but it’s really so very general that it has limited use in terms of learning about optimizing your site’s appearance.

How About Traffic and Backlinks?

I’m curious to see what kind of traffic might be generated by submitting your site and having it become popular. It might be an easy source of traffic. So far it’s nothing to click home about. I submitted my site on April 13 and have gotten a whopping 2 visits since then.

Admittedly, my site is not a design powerhouse. In fact, it leaves a lot to be desired so this is not the best test. For sites that have some truly astonishing design, the results may vary considerably. Here are my stats so far:

Additionally, you will NOT get any backlink joy from this site as all the outgoing links are set to nofollow. 

Bottom Line

It’s a fun idea that may end up generating a little buzz for those sites that make it into the top popularity listings, but otherwise it’s mostly a time sink after about the first 10 minutes.

At the very least, it’s a great way to see some cool and terrible designs that are out there, especially if you’re a designer needing a little inspiration.

They list the best web sites by weekly, monthly, and all-time and you can also see the worst sites of all time.

If you end up submitting your site and seeing decent results, or if you have some additional thoughts about it, please stop by and leave a comment. 

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