Hi,
I have searched the forums and I can accept that the sitemap is “virtual” but after having viewed one of mine I note the following:
1. Sitemap contains 5 sub sitemaps. These map to the Content Types, Taxonomies, Archives and so on in my Search Appearance.
2. The last modified dates of the 5 subsidiary sitemaps differ but the most recent (page) is 19th July. This is puzzling as I updated several pages 2 days ago.
3. The lines are sometimes in a greyed out font and other times in standard black. Both, however, are links.
I have the following questions:
1. How can I force an update to the Sitemap(s) if I have done some work that I believe materially affects them?
2. What is the significance of the the different font display?
3. How do I submit the sitemap to Google or Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and so forth?
4. If I remove on of the sitemap items (for example, I now do NOT want Authors indexed as part of the sitemap) will it automatically remove the XML file? Currently if you click that file then you get a 404.