You are correct - many a profile has disappeared from my H/L only to reappear in a few days/weeks as before.
As far as I know, you can either switch the profile from service provider to seeking services - this will remove the profile from everybodys HL until it is switched back
ORYou can deactivate the profile and reactivate within a certain time frame. - this will also remove it from all HLs
When a 'seeking services' profile (us) clicks on any message from a SP in their correspondence, it will give different messages, depending on which of the above options has been applied.
Roths explanation is quite likely nearer the mark though.