Hi, I'm wondering if a sitemap is really necessary (i'm pretty lazy) since it says somewhere that the google bot will automatically crawl through my site and index the pages. What advantages do I get for having a sitemap?
Google should be able to, over time, crawl the website. The advantages of a sitemap is that it will "direct" Google towards pages you have deemed important with your sitemap (Of course, it is just a hint for Googlebot, not an order). It has greatly helped me Index some of the pages google had difficulty getting to, because the depth of the pages..
I don't think it will hurt to have a sitemap for your site. If you're using Wordpress, there are a few good plugins that automatically generate an XML sitemap for your site and also notifies Google of the sitemap. In fact, I think it's helped my sites get indexed a bit faster.
I would advise having a sitemap if you have a website where you plan on keeping updating the content, with new posts or articles. If your website has a standard 5 or 10 pages then there really isn't much point.
In a word yes. It is essential and will make your life so much easier and more responsive. Google will almost overnight change their viewpoint of you. Seriously, if you haven't done one by now, make it a priority.
I would say Yes. Sitemaps are really helpful to inform search engines about the pages you got on your site. If you have a dynamic site with content being updated at regular basis then it really comes handy.