Google Sitemap - How it working for you

[purple]

I have put google sitemap on a few sites, and it did seem to show an intial boost to pages listed.
However it has never increased my SERP listings ( not sure why it would)

Recently have seen pages decrease again maybe a Big daddy effect?

Just interested in how people have faired using google sitemap has it helped development of sites, increased your traffic. Has there being any negative effects.

reserving judgement before I roll out to all sites.

[Receptional]

I've got Sitemap working on a few sites and - like you - I am wary of giving Google all my sites in one fell swoop.

I think that the real NUGGET is the difference between your average position for search phrases and your average position for search clicks. It seems to me that the PERFECTLY OPTIMIZED site - (whatever that is) would have an almost perfect correlation between the two lists. If they are not the same, then you can decide whether to start leaning your content more towards the phrases google is sending you traffic for (i.e. try to better convert the traffic google ALREADY sends) or you can change your content to try to improve the visual look of your listing when yo are appearing in the serps, so that you generate higher CTRs in thopse circumstances. In either event, your should be trying to get those two lists converging, not diverging, otherwise red flags will start appearing all over Google's algo.