Sitemaps; To do or not to do ?

[OneSmallStep82]

Wasn't sure where to post this exactly...

Was just wondering, I have noticed alot of websites with sitemaps, and have seen mention of sitemaps on different threads in these forums. I was just wondering, what is the point of showing how the links work on your page?

What is the benefit of this?

I'm still learning the ropes of SEO, thanks in advance

[daisey]

Google introduced Google Sitemaps so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The sitemap files can then be used to indicate to a web crawler how such pages can be found.
Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.

Since MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the same protocol, having a sitemap lets the four biggest search engines have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. However, a sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire site. [2]

XML sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now web developers submit a sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.