Publishing a page to the web

A page can be published: it becomes reachable through a link, without an account and read-only.

You do it from the same dialog as permissions, under Share → Publish to web. It is there and not in a separate menu on purpose: it is the same question — who can see this — with the widest possible answer.

Who can publish

Only whoever administers the page. Being able to edit a shared document is not enough: publishing is not editing content, it is changing who can see it.

Search engines, separately

"Allow search engines to find it" comes off. Off does not mean private: the link keeps working for whoever has it. The only thing that changes is that the page asks Google not to index it.

They are two different decisions, and the second one is hard to undo in practice.

If the link leaked

Regenerate the link invalidates the old one without unpublishing. That is what to use when a link reached somewhere it should not have.

Unpublish cuts access immediately. Moving the page to the trash does too.

What does not get published

Even when they are on the page:

• Mentions lose the link to the person; the name stays as text.
• Links to sub-pages become a title with no destination: publishing a page

does not publish its children.

• Reminders do not go out.