Ask writer Dennis Cooper and you'll find that the answer is Yes.

Cooper had hosted his blog on Blogger.com since 2002, only to find on June 28 that his 14 years of work had been deleted by site owner Google, with no explanation. Making matters worse, they also deleted his Gmail account.

I can drive a car but I guarantee you no NASCAR team would want me behind the wheel. If I can drive safely and get from point A to point B, why shouldn't I be able to drive for a team?

Easy answer - because it's pretty much guaranteed that I would wreck, and 100% guaranteed that I would come in last if I could even finish. Plus, who in the heck would want to watch me race (other than for the laughs)?

Similarly, did you know that elements of your website can not only be wrecking your chances for good search engine ranking but can also be driving visitors away?

"The Web is like a car now; the fact that it is moving is no longer interesting. What matters is what we do with it, and where we’re going." Andrian Kreye

When I first started developing websites 15 years ago, users of the internet were kind of like first-time parents - they had this wonderful new thing but weren't really sure what to do with.  Many people thought AOL was the internet, and we were all stuck on dial-up (I can barely remember that agony, thank goodness).

At that time, all websites were pretty much glorified online brochures - and glorified they were, with their blinking and twirling animated gifs.