How greatly do Sitemaps affect search term positions? I added a sitemap just a few days ago and for some reason, all my search positions slipped! A search term I was ranked #2 fell to 8, #44 fell somewhere FAR below, etc. Pretty much all my keywords slipped by a LOT in just 2-3 days. I checked my sitemap and it appears as though that I mistakenly set priority to 0.1 for my most important pages... Is this why I fell so much? I don't understand how a mere sitemap could affect my search position in so little a time... Perhaps it was due to other factors?
I don't think sitemap is a factor of your rankings downfall...might be there are some other reasons as well...
Hmm, I don't really know how else my rankings went down... Only two other things happened the past week apart from adding the sitemap: 1) I started getting a significant amount of traffic from a reputable website that is related to my keyword and 2) I made a small change to my layout.