Question about purposely de-indexing a site.

I want to de-index a site that no longer serves any use for a past client. I've adjusted my robots file accordingly and I got rid of all pages. So, when you go to the home page, you get the 403 Forbidden.

Question: Will the robots file still be read and the site will be de-indexed? Or do I need to have an index page up and running for Google to crawl it and access the robots file?


Thanks.

Why dont you just redirect to the new site or take the site offline? Site will disappear from the serps after some time.

There's no new site. Long story short, the site shows up number one for a former client's name, he no longer wants that site to show up under his name.

How would I go about taking the site offline? (If it's not too much to ask)


Thanks.

Delete the content, make it showing a 404.