Are xml sitemaps a thing of the past?

[HZseo]

We had an internal debate about the importance of having a sitemap.xml on your website. Basically, there is Google documentation that indicates a sitemap.xml is due diligence: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

And other authoritative forums, blogposts, etc. which indicate that sitemap creation and maintenance is a waste of your time, e.g.  http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/4803/the-sitemap-paradox/

A bigger question is: Are there cases in which not having a sitemap.xml actually became detrimental or risky?

Thanks in advance!

[David_ODonnell]

I don't know that not having one is detrimental or risky, but there are certainly advantages of having an xml sitemap. Not the least of which is being able to submit them to the search engines (Google Webmaster Tools for example) and seeing how well indexed your site is. You can also submit your images via sitemap and see how well indexed they are also.

[KeriMorgret]

You do want to make sure your sitemap is clean. Bing has stated that if over 1% of your xml sitemap URLs have errors, they'll ignore the entire sitemap.

I do agree with David about the benefits and ability to use it as a diagnostic as well as an aid in getting your content indexed.

[Maximise]

As long as you keep it up to date there should only be advantages. I use a free program called GsiteCrawler which runs once a week (automated with task scheduler) so it causes me zero maintenance time and I always have an up to date list of URL's for the search engines.