I recently began using two extensions for Google Chome which have been very helpful to see what some of the top ranking bloggers are using, so I can improve my site. First is "Built With Technology Profiler". It will show you a lot of really useful information about a site/blog such as what platform they use, which plugins they have installed, who they advertise with and much more detailed information about their server and tools. The other is PageRank Status which in the most basic form will give the site a 0-10 rating (Mine is 0 because I clearly suck!). It also has a bunch of other useful information like the Alexa traffic rank, indexed pages, backlinks, domain info, page info etc. They both have been helping me see what's wrong with my blog and what others are doing to have an edge over me. Hopefully this will help you too.