Hi Sheena!
Thank you for your reply, and, of course, your very welcome!

If I discover anything else 'new' about Google sitemaps, I'll post it up here again for sure. And, you're right on, as recently I have noticed a drop in Google-recognized inbound links for my site overall and also some PR has decreased a bit on some of my pages. And, I was kind of expecting this as I now remember that I read a few months ago that the Big G was planning to turn up their algorithms in order to combat against link farms and fake blog spamming et al. Also, IMHO, I really think that Google has further improved and recently put even more significance into their
Hilltop algorithm as well. Well, its either that or they just want their beloved You Tube to take over the web video industry!?!?!?!
Stay tuned!
Rob <*@v@*>