thread Re: Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches in Online Store

Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches

ridiculouspleas — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 02:19:12 GMT

Hello, I cleared my cache and this PDF still appears though it was deleted:

https://www.rossmoor-writers.com/uploads/6/3/3/8/63387153/adins-ad_sweet-steps.pdf

Re: Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches

TheRealChipA — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 16:23:00 GMT

Hi @ridiculouspleas. What exactly do you mean by you “deleted a PDF?” Did you delete the web page with the link to the PDF? Or something else? I’m looking for the specific steps you took in Weebly to do what you thought was deleting the actual file.

Thanks,

Re: Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches

ridiculouspleas — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 16:57:16 GMT

Thank you for asking. The PDF above was deleted at the request of my 92yo father and a new PDF version of his narrative was then uploaded here https://www.rossmoor-writers.com/articles.html For whatever reason, you can still search the web and find the old deleted PDF, not sure why.

Re: Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches

TheRealChipA — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 17:26:46 GMT

Ok. What did you do in Square Online to delete the PDF? Did you delete a link to it on one of your web pages? Did you delete an entire web page?

I’m asking for specifics because I don’t know of a way you can actually delete a PDF from your website right now. All you can do is remove any links to the PDF, and then unless someone has the complete address to it they won’t be able to find it.

As for web searches, that has nothing to do with Square. Once you publish something to the internet, you must accept the fact that it will always be out there. Pages are archived by lots of bots and such. Even pages you delete from your web site might still be able to be accessed through searches like Google and Bing, etc. As far as the internet is concerned the word “delete” doesn’t have a lot of meaning.

You might be able to contact Square Customer Success and have them delete that PDF from your web site, but I’m not sure that is possible yet.f

As long as people coming to your web site can’t see a link anymore to that PDF, it is just sitting out there orphaned and invisible unless someone has that complete address you entered in your original post. That’s about the best you can do. The internet never forgets, I’m afraid.

Re: Weebly website deleted a PDF, but it still appears in a web searches

ridiculouspleas — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 17:50:51 GMT

Yes, but there should be a way to click on that old link and end up with a 404 error response status code. I will try SCS to see if they know. Thank you for the lead.