Delete
Simply click the Delete button on the editing form and confirm you really want to delete the page. It will be as if the page never existed so be careful there are no other pages linking to it on the website or from anywhere else on the Internet.
Unpublish
You should try not to ever Publish a page before it is ready. Because once it is “live” there is a good chance that it has been indexed by Google and other search engines or even linked to from another website.
If your intent is for the content to no longer be available then you should delete it. But, if you need a record of the content:
- Clone the page. This will generate a new unpublished page with a new URL address that Google has never seen.
- Then delete the original version.
Deleted & Unpublished Page Results in Search
Google will take a while before it re-indexes the site so the page may still show up in search results. Google will keep indexing a page that is unpublished longer than if the page is deleted.
As long as it is not cached, visitors to a deleted page will see the Page Not Found page. If you unpublished the page, visitors will see the Access Denied page.
Google sees a code in the header. On the page not found page the code is “404 Not Found” on the Access Denied page the code is “403 Forbidden”
