Should you use the webmaster tools provided by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft?
Search Engine Journal posed the question "Should You Use Google Webmaster Tools?" and got some pretty good reponses. I think when talking about this, you need to consider the three big ones: Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live.com Webmaster Central.
Some of the questions posted by SEJ (paraphrased):
Is listing your sitemap in your robots.txt enough?
If you own multiple sites, should you set up separate Google accounts?
Do these services give too much insight to the companies providing them?
Or are they the best things ever?
Overall, the responses were very positive. A few people were neutral, but almost no one was negative.
Taking Google as an example, I look at it like this: They already know everything about my sites. I use AdSense and I use Analytics, so every detail is at their disposal. I figure it can't hurt to make sure they have an up-to-date sitemap for each of my sites, which can only help to get content in their index more quickly.
As a general rule, I create a sitemap and add it to all three services for every new site I create.
What do you think?