Is sitemap Important For Search Engine

[joomlads07]

Can anyone please let how important is sitemap in search engine ranking. Does it play any kind of role in SERP ?

[C.Rebecca]

Its like asking 'Is SEO important for ranking high on SEs' ?

Ofcourse it is important.

SEO is all about making Google understand your website. And sitemap helps Google do that

[mjtaylor]

Its like asking 'Is SEO important for ranking high on SEs' ?

Ofcourse it is important.

SEO is all about making Google understand your website. And sitemap helps Google do that

With all due respect, neither sitemaps nor SEO are important for ranking high on search engines if your content is kickass and your site is navigable.

Sitemaps are only important for search engines if they would have trouble discovering pages without them. Smaller, simpler sites simply do not need them.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Can anyone please let how important is sitemap in search engine ranking. Does it play any kind of role in SERP ?

A traditional site map (note the spelling) is important for your visitors and all search bots. It can be crawled by any search bot and helps get your pages indexed through the bots following the links on the site map. An XML sitemap is only supported by certain search bots. Also, Google does not guarantee that submitting a Sitemap will get your pages indexed.

Even Matt Cutts has said, if you have limited resources, do the traditional site map first then the XML sitemap. i.e. have both but do the HTML site map first.

[craigmn3]

in regards site map does have one important benefit. It will put all your page links up to the top levels of your website...which will allow them to be more easily indexed by the search engines, which often don't venture down to the deep levels

you might have to make several because of the links per page limit (@100) (html)

[deepsand]

A traditional site map (note the spelling) is important for your visitors and all search bots. It can be crawled by any search bot ...

Given that there is not a single format for HTML site maps, such may or may not be the case.

[mjtaylor]

in regards site map does have one important benefit. It will put all your page links up to the top levels of your website...which will allow them to be more easily indexed by the search engines, which often don't venture down to the deep levels

you might have to make several because of the links per page limit (@100) (html)

I believe there is no longer a limit of 100 links per page, though for users, it is wise, but Google has no issue with more than 100 links per page.

[chineseseoshifu]

Sitemaps are what help search engines find the URLs of web pages of your website, so it helps indexation, but that is all.

It doesn't help you with the rankings - how sitemaps point URLs to search engines doesn't include factors that improves rankings, for example, anchor text.

So to simplify, a sitemap only tells search engines that there is a certain URL, but doesn;t say what the URL is about, which means your rankings for some keyword may actually be harmed if there are too many sitemaps that contain the URL you would like to rank for the keyword.

[deepsand]

Given that, for those SEs which support its being uploaded on command, an XML site map guarantees prompt discovery, it would be wise to employ such.

[Prodigal]

Sitemap is relevant or its irrelevant?, it all depends on the internal link system of your site,

its basically used by crawlers to discover pages which would otherwise not possibly be crawled (mainly due to lack of inter-linking)

an XML site map guarantees prompt discovery

Exactly! and with that being said, it won't harm anyone to deploy a sitemap