When is a Sitemap not a Sitemap?

[HelenLF]

I have a friend who has a Flash/html site at present.
The company running the site offered to add a sitemap. However this is merely navigational links at the bottom of the page with a heading 'sitemap'. Would this be of any value from an SEO point of view, or would a proper sitemap on a separate page be better?

[almostbob]

Sitemaps for SEO are not human readable
the sitemap is a machine readable file detailing the file structure, in its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about change frequency, relative importance, useful sitemaps can be generated at many freeware sites, I use the one at auditmypc.com
a human readable 'sitemap' is just the site developer stating that their navigation system does not work

IF the provider has added a sitemap it is possible that the link table at the bottom is only a human readable extension of the xml machine sitemap
search the site for a 'sitemap.xml' file
if there is not one, create and install one, ensure the navigation system is logical, and remove the links added by the provider
The google webmaster tools pages give relevant instruction on sitemap provenance, suggest to your friend, that they sign up to google webmaster tools, read and follow all the instructions, >>--humor-->and get the benefit of google's wisdom about SEbots

If using flash, try to enable textreader extensions in flash (exactly how depends on which software is being used to make the flash)
text reader extensions are a disability aid, that embeds descriptive text in the flash files, like closed captioning. SE Bots can index that text, removing much of the zero ranking that flash sites receive as un-indexable

[HelenLF]

Thanks for the quick reply. Really helpful and exactly what I was looking for.

[Jennifersarah]

It's really a very informative post. I know only the basic things about sitemap. Now i clearly understand the difference between machine readable and human readable sitemap.