I would like your opinions regarding Sitemaps. Are they an absolute necessity or can a site be successful without a Sitemap?

Sure, a site can be successful without a sitemap. However, if you have the ability to create one, I'd highly recommend it.

Here's a model: http://pages.ebay.com/sitemap.html

Sitemaps are in my opinion a mandatory item if for nothing else a search engine. Having all your pages indexed is a priority and a site map tells the search engines where to find the pages.

Do a google search for "google sitemap" and you'll be able to get one generated for free on your site. Upload it to your google webmaster section for your site and you'll see instant results.

Other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing also have sitemap upload areas that are effective.

Sitemaps are necessary for large websites or a website that has complex structure. For small websited it is not really necessary, I think.

Many sites have them, many don't it just depends on you.

In general, there are two types of sitemaps.
The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site - often by section - and is meant to help users find the information they need.
While this type of sitemap can help both visitors and search engines navigate your site, it's different from an XML Sitemap that can be submitted to Google using Webmaster Tools.
XML Sitemaps - usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S - are a way for you to give Google information about your site.

Great points pacifich and Conor - sitemaps really need to be an intregal part of your online strategy.

Sitemaps are indeed important for your online success. you should configure it and submit to the Google

Thanks for the information.. but i am still bit confused regarding which is more beneficial from SEO point of view.. Is there any other format other than nested structure of sitemaps designs to make it more easily to read??

I think you will find this article very helpful on Sitemaps: (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...maps-faqs.html)

I would say it can't hurt. They are easy to create for small sites, like a web hosting business site. There are many software package/sites out there that will create them too.

Mark

You should def create sitemap for both Google and Yahoo/Bing. Go to google webmaster tool page and submit your sitemap. One of the benefits of submitting a sitemap is google tells you how many pages are indexed. This way you can focus on pages that are not being indexed. usually search engines won't index pages they think that are crap esp when it comes to forums.

there are 2 types of sitemaps, The ones that visitors to your site use and the ones that the webspiders use. I think both are great but you only need the Webspider one for SEO

A website can be successful without a site map. But I'd suggest to put one on your website if you can.

creating web site sitemap is one of the things that every web master have to do .