GitHub Pages: Inconsistent Accessibility of Deployed Content After Artifact Deletion

[PremsaiTippaluri]

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Hi GitHub Community,

I’m deploying HTML report files to GitHub Pages using upload-pages-artifact@v3 and deploy-pages@v4, creating timestamped directories for each run (e.g., deployment/envname/{timestamp}).

Here’s what I’ve observed:

September 17: After running tests and uploading reports to GitHub Pages, the reports are accessible at their respective URLs.
September 18: After running tests again and uploading new reports, both the September 17 and September 18 reports are accessible at their respective URLs.
Artifact Deletion: When I delete the artifact for September 18, the reports with that timestamp remain accessible.
September 19: After running tests again, the reports for September 19 and September 17 are accessible, but the September 18 reports return a 404 error.
It seems that GitHub Pages maintains access to reports even after artifact deletion, but the reports become inaccessible after subsequent deployments.

Questions:
Artifact Deletion vs. Deployment: Why do the September 18 reports remain accessible even after the artifact is deleted? How does GitHub Pages handle previously deployed content after artifact deletion?