Summary
Auto Draft is the temporary post status and placeholder title WordPress gives a new post the instant the editor opens, before anything is saved. It exists so autosave has a database record to write into. Auto drafts left untouched are deleted automatically after seven days, but any that get saved or published survive and must be edited or removed manually.
Nitin Batra is a Google certified digital marketing professional who manages WordPress publishing workflows and technical SEO audits for content sites, including crawl and index hygiene for thin and placeholder URLs.
Last updated: August 23, 2026
Auto Draft is the default post status WordPress assigns to a brand new post the moment the editor is opened, and any auto draft left untouched is purged automatically after seven days.
- Awareness
- Reach
- Action
- Consideration
The correct answer is: Consideration
Key Takeaways
- – Auto Draft is the placeholder post status WordPress assigns to a new, never-saved post, and it carries the literal title “Auto Draft” until you type your own.
- – The status exists so autosave has a database row to write to, which is why the record appears before you click Save Draft.
- – WordPress deletes auto drafts older than seven days through a scheduled cron task, so unused ones clean themselves up.
- – The cleanup only applies to posts still in auto-draft status. If one is saved or published, it becomes a live thin page that can be crawled and needs manual correction.
Why does a published URL show "Auto Draft" as the title?
That happens when a post was created and published before a real title was entered, so the placeholder title was saved along with it. The post is now a normal published page with almost no content. Edit it, add the correct title and body, or move it to trash and set a redirect if the URL has already picked up links.
How long does WordPress keep an auto draft before deleting it?
Seven days. WordPress schedules a daily task called wp_scheduled_auto_draft_delete that removes any post still sitting in auto-draft status past that window. If your site’s cron is not firing, for example on a very low traffic site without a real server cron, these rows can pile up in the wp_posts table.
Is an Auto Draft the same as a regular draft?
No. A regular draft is a post you saved on purpose, and it stays in the database until you delete it. An auto draft is created automatically by the editor and is treated as disposable, which is why the seven day cleanup only touches auto drafts and never your saved drafts.
Can an Auto Draft page hurt SEO?
Only if it gets published or otherwise becomes publicly reachable. Then you have a URL with a placeholder title and no useful content, which is exactly the kind of thin page that wastes crawl budget and can appear in Search Console coverage reports. Run a crawl or check Search Console for indexed pages with no title text and clean them up.