Google Sitemaps - help or hurt? (2008 edition)

[apauto]

I've done a search here on WW to find out what you all think about Google Sitemap submissions. 99% of the threads were from 2005 and 2006.

I'd like to know if anyone has any experience where the Sitemaps helped or hurt their site. I know Matt Cutts has specifically said he has spoken with the sitemap team, and it "should" *not* hurt your site to submit a sitemap, but as many people put it... "after submitting a sitemap, the next day, my house burned down".

So, I know Google Sitemaps is designed to help Google find all of your pages, and for a good site with good inter linking it should be un necessary, but for a forum site for example, I think it's a good idea.

What are your thoughts?

[Quadrille]

I think they are great, and I've had no problems.

If you use webmaster tools without problems, I'm sure you'll be fine.

However, if there is a problem with your site, then it could be that waving a sitemap under Google's nose will draw attention to that - but if you are

(a) confident your site is OK or
(b) not 100% sure - but if there's a problem, you'd like to get it out in the open and sorted asap

... then go for it.

[tedster]

One of my clients has a large website (over 1,000,000 urls) and tnew pages go up quite frequently from various departments. Their XML sitemap definitely helps them get new pages into the index in a more timely manner than they saw before they added the sitemap.