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The current site navigation is done through a search form. UX wise, I feel it's the best solution we can currently offer our uses. Because this is the case, I have a sitemap that covers all the pages (5Million). Will it improve SEO, if I built a browse-able hierarchy that its sole purpose is only to help spiders?

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Possible duplicate: How to SEO a search only website? – w3d Sep 8 '12 at 12:42
@w3d that question doesn't help me as it doesn't consider the site has an sitemap. I'm trying to understand if it makes a difference to the spider to receive the links from a sitemap than through a browse-able hierarchy. – Noam Sep 8 '12 at 15:03

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At least as far as Google is concerned, the sitemap file will be helping… but not as much as actual links in pages would. It's covered in this Q&A video with Matt Cutts. He's talking about public facing site maps, which I imagine isn't an option for 5 million pages, but the principle is the same: crawlable links on web pages.

I'd definitely consider some sort of "normal" navigation, even if limited. Breadcrumbs would be particularly helpful, especially if you can get them through all pages.

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