I have a large website that I do not want to maintain after my domain name and web hosting subscription expire in a few months. So, I'm just going to let the website die.

Is there anything in particular that I should do before the site is gone?

Most of my visitors each month are new, not repeats, so I don't feel the need to post a "closing soon" notice on the site.

How long do you think it will take before my pages stop showing up in search results after the site is gone? Should I revise my sitemap ahead of time so that my web pages will stop showing up in searches? (If so, how would I do this? Submit a sitemap with the home page only?)

Any other thoughts or ideas?

Hello Melodie, I believe that when your page expires, hosting will automatically bring your site down. You might want to back up your files on a USB drive though, you never know when you might want to sign up again.

It would not hurt to give a notice add a watermark to the front page for week and do what Max said.
Close it down by using the file manager to delete all files especially if the content is special. I have found even with a paid site, software I sell have some copies extra downloaded. I just check but if it became rife I would serve them from a home computer

I would also contact your hosting company if you aren't the host yourself and let them know when you've closed it so they will remove any residuals and close anything else that needs closing. They don't always do that automatically when a domain expires, some are done manually and some automatic depending on the size of the company etc. So always a good idea to cover all bases that way too.

Thanks for your thoughts! I am not hosting the site myself, so I'll communicate with my web hosting company to be sure everything is properly deleted.

JoAnn, congratulations on your new grandbaby!

You're welcome and thanks too!

I hope this IS NOT RELEVANT but just in case

I have a competitor selling jewellery who changed hosting company some years ago before the gold prices went through the roof.

To this day, i think 5 years later his old site still appears in google searches, and he still gets orders through it, I dont know where he or she stands legally, I guess they just re fund and cancel.

I only know about it because new prospective clients regularly ask me to price match, with a link to his product which is similar to mine at 1/2 my prices.

Drives me bonkers !!!!

I shut my old site down by putting X infront of all the main file names on the server GONE FOREVER !

My guess is that the server they had the site on previously never deleted it so it's still there. I doubt very much that people were purchasing through a cached page years later ..... at least I sure "hope" a cached page 5 years later wouldn't actually function. Show maybe yes, but function I don't think so as it's only a partial part of the system being only one page. Most likely the server never deleted the site and it's still sitting there never being updated etc.

And this site will keep your stuff long after your site has been removed.
http://archive.org/web/web.php