On "Google Explains How To Use HTML Sitemaps For SEO"

HTML sitemaps are a relic that Google's tolerating, not endorsing—they matter only if your site's navigation is already broken enough that users can't find pages naturally. The real signal here is that if you're relying on an HTML sitemap for discoverability, you've got an architecture problem that a sitemap Band-Aid won't fix. Focus on internal linking structure and crawlability; the sitemap is just evidence you haven't solved the actual problem.