Hello Hugh21,
Yes, your Shopify store should automatically update your sitemap.xml file as you make changes to your website. However, sometimes there can be a delay, or there may be a cache issue. Here’s what you can do to remedy the situation:
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Cache issue: Clear your browser’s cache and try again. Sometimes the browser saves a copy of your pages for faster loading, and you may be looking at an old version of your sitemap.
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Give it some time: Shopify’s system will update the sitemap automatically, but sometimes it can take a little while (up to 48 hours). If you’ve recently added new URLs, wait a bit and then check again.
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Check robots.txt: Ensure that you haven’t accidentally blocked search engine access to your sitemap in your robots.txt file.
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Re-submit your sitemap to search engines: If your sitemap isn’t updating, you can manually submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This can help ensure that the search engines are crawling the most recent version of your sitemap.
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Contact Shopify Support: If you’re still not seeing changes, you can reach out to Shopify Support. They can look into whether there’s a technical issue that’s preventing your sitemap from updating properly.
Lastly, it’s always a good idea to make sure your new pages are properly linked within your website. Search engines find new pages by following links from existing pages. So, if your new pages aren’t linked anywhere, they might not be discovered and added to the sitemap.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Best, Will