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Has anyone ever seen a log file analysis return only images and no actual page URLs?

I'm sure most of you have heard about this startup, RankScience, that has big ambitions to disrupt the SEO industry with their automated (I know I know...the word 'automated' and 'SEO' in the same sentence!!!) optimization software. Their claim is that by running thousands of congruent A/B tests on your site, they can maximize rankings and organic traffic. Initially my thoughts were "oh crap, there goes my (and a lot of other people's) career". But then I started thinking about it a bit more and realized a couple things. First, software can't replace a face-to-face client meeting. Being in an agency world as most of us are, client interactions are vital to a sustained partnership. Second, someone is going to have to understand what this software does, configure it, and monitor it, and I'm ok with that being part of my job if that's how the industry shifts. Third, and most importantly, in theory this software has the capability to reverse engineer search algorithms. If they had the data of 10,000 websites using their platform and are collecting data on what works and what doesn't, it's only a matter of time before they can pick apart the algorithm piece by piece to figure out exactly how it works. Google is obviously not going to like that very much and will almost certainly right the ship. That's my 2 cents, looking forward to what your thoughts are on RankScience and the future of our industry.

I've got a client that only shows pricing if a user is logged in - they're B2B and only sell at a wholesale level. The site is massive, has been around for about a decade, and has had an active SEO campaign for years. They've been losing ground on top ranked keywords, primarily in the 1-2 spots, rest of the first page remains strong and actually improves regularly.My hunch is that Google recognizes the inability for anyone to make a purchase on the site. As a result, they're realizing that the searcher intent doesn't match the actions that can be taken on the site and are bumping them down. Has anyone seen a similar situation or have any evidence to suggest my hunch is correct?

One of the sites I manage was migrated to secure 2 months ago. XML sitemaps have been updated, canonical tags all have https:, and a redirect rule was applied. Despite all this, I'm still seeing non-secure URLs in Google's index. The weird thing is, when I click those links, they go to the secure version. Has anyone else seen weird things with Google not properly indexing secure versions of URLs?

Hi Mozzers! I've got a client that is in the early stages of moving the development of their site to another company and therefore, a new server. The site is very large and the migration will take place over 18 months. In the beginning, smaller chunks of the site will be moved, and as that process gets dialed in, larger portions will migrate. It was brought to our attention today that they (on either side of development) have not yet worked out the logistics of keeping the domain and URL structure consistent throughout the migration. The initial proposal was that they publish newly migrated pages to a subdomain, which we obviously want to steer away from. I'm now on a mission to find a solution that will make everyone happy; client, old dev, new dev, and us (as the SEO partner). Does anyone have experience in managing SEO through a migration such as this?

We have an internal debate going on right now about the use of a link list of SEO pages in the footer. My stance is that they serve no purpose to people (heatmaps consistently show near zero activity), therefore they shouldn't be used. I believe that if something on a website is user-facing, then it should also beneficial to a user - not solely there for bots. There are much better ways to get bots to those pages, and for those people who didn't enter through an SEO page, internal linking where appropriate will be much more effective at getting them there. However, I have some opposition to this theory and wanted to get some community feedback on the topic. Anyone have thoughts, experience, or data to share on this subject?