The things your website forgot to delete

Leftovers are harmless to the business owner, who never visits those pages, and embarrassing to everyone else. A customer who lands on a sample page or a dead button doesn’t think the site is unfinished. They think the business is.

What we found on Grand Strand websites

• Coming Soon, in the main menu. A property manager whose Rentals, Property Management and About Us pages each say only “Coming Soon…”. Those are three of the first things a renter or an owner taps.
• WordPress’s sample page. A local business whose site still has the page WordPress installs on day one, the one where a bike messenger introduces himself from Los Angeles.
• “Hello world!” A law firm with WordPress’s first sample post still published, under the firm’s full footer.
• An Order Now button to a closed store. A business whose main call to action sends people to an online store that no longer exists.
• Buttons to the developer’s copy. A business whose five main home-page buttons point at the web designer’s test address, which no longer loads.
• Someone else’s name in the code. A law firm whose search description and map pin name a different law firm, so that’s what Google and AI assistants read.
• Raw code on the page. A business whose page builder broke, leaving the code behind it as most of the visible text on the home page.

Find yours in ten minutes

1. Click everything in your own menuOn a phone and on a computer. Every menu item, every button on the home page, every link in the footer. Note anything that goes nowhere or says Coming Soon.
2. Search Google for your own siteType site:yourbusiness.com into Google. It lists every page Google knows about, including the ones you’ve forgotten. Look for sample pages, test pages and old promotions.
3. Search your site for the usual suspectsSample Page, Hello world, Lorem ipsum, Coming Soon, test, and your web designer’s name or test address.
4. Run the free checkOur free website check and AI visibility check flag leftover template text and AI working notes in the page’s code.

Why it keeps happening

Most sites are launched once and then edited a page at a time. Nobody owns the whole thing, so nobody notices the corners. The fix is a short list, checked every few months, or a care plan where someone does it for you.