What is the value of having an HTML sitemap on site?

[Pete4]

For years now whenever we recreate a site we always set up both an xml sitemap and an html sitemap page.

Stupid question maybe - but what is the value to having an html sitemap on site?

[AWCthreads]

I've asked the same thing in the past and told by authoritative users in this forum the following: "If your site is structurally sound, you shouldn't need a sitemap."

I've bought into that principle.

If customers scroll to the bottom of my pages without finding or keyword searching what they need, I've probably not done a good job of setting it up.

Put into practice, we're in the process of revamping to a top navigation with search suggest features and left nav filtering functionality.

[Marcus_Miller]

I tend to think a sitemap has plenty of value for some sites.

1. It is a useful tool for users to navigate your site or get a high level view of the content

2. It is a useful page for search engine spiders to crawl the site with every (or most) pages only a link away (and the sitemap is often linked from every page as well albeit in a footer link).

Obviously, search engines only crawl a given amount of links on a page so take that into consideration and break your site map up into chunks of 100 links or so - no hard and fast rules here as it's going to be different for amazon than for a small one man band operating in a small town or city but 100 links is a good starting point.

You could always review the analytics - do people use this page? Does it get crawled? Is it a useful link to drop into given posts and pages to aid users in their navigation of the site?

It's almost like a sitemap is the big board that you see in the shopping mall with all the floors, areas and shops on. In many cases it is a useful navigational tool for users with some search engines benefits so what's not to like?

There are no concrete answers here but think about your users and if this could benefit them then it is nearly always a good thing and if it kicks back some search benefits as well then all the better.

Hope that helps

Marcus