Which is better: an HTML site map or XML Sitemap?
Why Webmasters Stack Exchange recommends it
Webmasters Stack Exchange answerers point people to it as Google's own word on HTML versus XML sitemaps, and askers cite it as the old source behind current advice.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2012 to 2015.
What it is
A 75-second Q&A from Google's webmaster video series in which Matt Cutts answers a viewer's question about whether an HTML site map or an XML Sitemap is better for Google's crawler. It was published by the Google Search Central channel in 2009.
What people said
Recommends Anagio · 2012-06 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “Is an xml sitemap good or bad”
Here's a video of Matt Cutts from Google talking about both HTML and XML sitemaps [this video] He suggests starting with an HTML, but if you have time use an XML sitemap as well. HTML sitemaps contain <a> tag links something Google will definitely crawl. XML isn't guaranteed but he does say use both if you can
Recommends GDVS · 2012-09 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “browse-able hierarchy vs. sitemap”
At least as far as Google is concerned, the sitemap file will be helping… but not as much as actual links in pages would. It's covered in this Q&A video with Matt Cutts [this video] . He's talking about public facing site maps, which I imagine isn't an option for 5 million pages, but the principle is the same: crawlable links on web pages. I'd definitely consider some sort of "normal" navigation, even if limited. Breadcrumbs would be particularly helpful, especially if you can get them through all pages.
Cites Adam · 2015-02 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “Are HTML sitemaps needed in modern websites?”
Most of the articles you find regarding HTML sitemaps these days seem to be based on old and outdated sources, especially this 6 year old video [this video] . 6 years in the SEO world is ancient. So SEO experts; do we really need to provide HTML sitemaps anymore? Realistically just how much of an impact will they have on SEO? I'm not talking about XML sitemaps here, by the way. My thoughts are that in the modern world of semantic mark-up, tags, Schema microdata [LINK] ,and rich/fresh content driven websites, that a HTML sitemap just seems an incredibly outdated and desperate attempt to try and claw some favour with the search engines, when really that time could be spent implementing much more ef