Just read this article http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expert-advice-on-google-sitemaps-verify-but-dont-submit What do you guys think?
I agree, atleast until google gets their act together and doesnt try to pull there listing details person by person.
I thought the Sitemaps debate was over a while ago, but I never thought about it from this point of view. The article and comments have some great pointers, I might make some changes .
You might want to check out this thread OP (in the Sitemaps sub-forum): http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=100844
People come up with the strangest idea. My navigation is done automatically by the CMS I am using, so there is no worry about detecting missing inbounds or whatever. More important is to get indexed quickly and that usually happens within two hours from writing. If you ask me, I get the feeling all those SEO are under a huge stress to talk as much as possible to look competent. Poor bastards
Sometimes my sitemap gets submitted multiple times per day - I get awesome results. New pages get indexed superfast.
I was in SES London last week, where the same debate is going on. Mikel a very well known SEO is bent against sitemaps where others are right on board. I tend to like sitemaps just to make sure there are no spidering problems especially handy for newbies. Rand always has some great points but until I really see a downside, why not! "Why are so many SEOs recommending against submitting a feed to Sitemaps? Because the data you get from the natural crawl IS valuable, and submitting an XML feed (or any other format) can cause that natural process of inclusion to be lost. If a page isn't accessible, doesn't carry enough link juice, or lacks unique, valuable content, I want to know about it, and the Sitemaps process can be a hinderance." I can see this point to a degree though but you have to pick your poison LOL SML