Google Search seems to keep things in its index conservatively, hoping that 404 and other errors are transient. I'm guessing the Google+ profile didn't appear

Google Search seems to keep things in its index conservatively, hoping that 404 and other errors are transient. I'm guessing the Google+ profile didn't appear in "featured links" (don't know the proper name for the special links at the top) anymore, only in the organic search results. plus.google.com is probably crawled just like the rest of the Web by Google Search (as it should be), and there is no special treatment for it, so having an outdated result in page 3 for a few weeks after the profile has been changed is likely standard behavior. The post confirms this since the search result snippet image gives more info that was available when clicking through to the private profile.