Sitemaps: over-rated or under-utilised?

[phillip]

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Hey all

Due to a recent move I'm currently between jobs and have invested a little time in to some affiliate projects (you may have seen my noobie threads about) that I've always been meaning to get around to.

Anyway, to the point, I use both Google Webmaster tools and Analytics, and due to primarily slow indexing (and also a slight rage I had over a one page affiliate site beating mine in rankings... despite minimal use of tagging and no meta description?! :cry), I was wondering about the power of sitemaps. Many people swear by them as an essential and I read an article the other day (can't find it now because I'm on another laptop.. always the way :blush), but it suggested that you should use multiple sitemaps - pretty much in reflection of your site's file structure.

Does anyone else do this? Obviously it requires a site of a certain size and complexity, but I simply use one at the moment, that I submit via Webmaster tools.

That also leads me onto another question: does file format matter? I usually submit it as .txt because I've never thought it matters, but does anyone consider .xml sitemaps as more valuable?

I realise there's probably a lot of content surrounding this topic online (I've read Google's SEO tips manual), but I figured it might be more rewarding to start a post here and perhaps debate it. I still can't get my head round the fact a one page site has beaten mine (of approx 10), even though I've embraced many of the SEO tips posted here! Could simply be an indexing/time issue I guess...

I guess the question I'm really looking for an answer to is: what do you view as the most time-worthy SEO technique?

Anyway enough rambling and, as always, thanks in advance,

Phill

[thebusiness]

I guess the question I'm really looking for an answer to is: what do view as the most time-worthy SEO technique?

In relation to your question, crawlability is very important and a sitemap is part of that. A regular html sitemap is more or less essential and an xml secondary, depending on the complexity of your site.
I don't think a sitemap will necessarily have that much instant effect (if any really) but helping googlebot and your users to find your content will pay-off over the long term.