Keyword Monitoring & Page Change Alerts

Uptime isn’t the only signal. A page can be “up” while the content is wrong: an error banner, an out-of-stock message, or a broken deploy that still returns 200 OK.

UpDog watches for the specific words and phrases you care about and sends page change alerts when they appear, disappear, or change.

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Keyword monitoring dashboard showing an alert when a phrase appears

What is keyword monitoring?

Keyword monitoring is a simple form of content monitoring: UpDog periodically fetches a page you provide and checks whether specific text is present (or not present) in the response.

It’s not SEO rank tracking. You’re not monitoring Google positions—you’re monitoring whether a web page says what it’s supposed to say.

What UpDog can alert you on

Keyword monitoring is built for practical “is the page behaving?” checks. You define the signal in plain language, and UpDog alerts based on whether that text is found.

Keyword appears

Get alerted when a phrase shows up on a page (for example, a maintenance banner or a new “available now” message).

Keyword disappears

Get alerted when expected text is missing—useful for broken releases, removed UI elements, or a page returning the wrong template.

Match / no‑match rules

Model real checks using “must contain” and “must not contain” rules. UpDog uses straightforward string matching so you can keep setup simple.

A practical way to catch “up but wrong”

If a page changes, that often shows up as missing expected text or new unexpected text. Keyword monitoring turns those signals into fast alerts without requiring heavy scraping or complex rules.

Common use cases

Teams use website keyword monitoring for operational workflows, product changes, and early incident detection. Examples:

  • Inventory changes: “out of stock” disappears or “back in stock” appears.
  • Maintenance mode: a “maintenance” banner appears during an incident.
  • Pricing updates: “pricing” or “$29/month” text changes after a publish.
  • Terms changes: your terms of service or refund policy text changes unexpectedly.
  • Compliance pages: privacy policy and legal notices change and you need a record of when.
  • Hiring signals: a new job posting appears (“we’re hiring”).
  • Security advisories: a vendor advisory page updates with a new CVE or mitigation step.
  • Release notes: a product release notes page gets a new entry.
  • Status page keywords: “incident”, “degraded”, or a specific component name appears.
  • Tickets and drops: event tickets switch to “available now”.

Monitor the right part of the page

Most pages contain noisy parts that change all the time: headers, footers, cookie notices, rotating banners, timestamps, A/B tests, and localization. If your keyword is too generic, you’ll either miss the real change or get false alerts.

  • Choose stable pages when possible (a product page, a release notes page, a specific status component).
  • Choose specific phrases that reflect the real state (for example, “out of stock” vs “stock”).
  • Avoid dynamic snippets like timestamps and personalized greetings—monitor a phrase that won’t drift.

Tip: use a “monitor-friendly” URL

If you own the page, consider creating a small, stable URL that includes only the text you want to verify (or exposes a clear status string). A clean target reduces false alerts and keeps checks lightweight.

Avoid false alerts

Keyword monitoring is only useful if it’s trustworthy. A few practical habits reduce noise while keeping detection fast:

  • Pick unambiguous phrases: prefer full messages over single words.
  • Watch for localization and A/B tests: text can vary by language, region, or experiment cohort.
  • Use reasonable intervals: very frequent checks can amplify harmless one-off variations.
  • Confirm before escalating: if you get an alert that looks suspicious, refresh the page once (or wait a short moment and re-check) before paging the whole team.

How to set up keyword monitoring

  1. Add a page URL you want to watch.
  2. Enter the keyword(s) or phrase(s) that represent “healthy” (and/or “unhealthy”).
  3. Choose alert channels (email and SMS) and a schedule that matches how quickly you need to know.

Route alerts into your workflow

Email and SMS are a great baseline. If you triage incidents elsewhere, route alerts into the tools your team already uses.

See UpDog alerts and integrations for options.

Keyword monitoring vs uptime monitoring

They answer different questions. Pairing them gives you stronger coverage with fewer blind spots.

Signal What it tells you Best for
Uptime monitoring The server responds (and typically returns an expected status code). Hard outages, network failures, DNS/TLS issues, and endpoint availability.
Keyword monitoring The page says what you expect (text is present or absent). Partial outages, broken deploys, banner changes, and critical content updates.

A common setup is to monitor uptime for the “front door” URL and add keyword monitoring for a few high-signal phrases (login text, “maintenance”, “error”, “out of stock”, etc.).

Related features

Keyword monitoring is strongest when paired with other signals. Related pages:

FAQ

A match means the page content contains the exact word or phrase you configured. If you want fewer false alerts, choose a stable phrase that only appears when the state is truly different (for example, “out of stock” instead of “stock”).

Often, you’ll get the best signal by using a small set of phrases: one or two that must be present and one or two that must not be present. If you need to cover multiple states (like “available”, “limited”, “out of stock”), pick distinct phrases for each state so alerts are clear.

Yes. Keyword monitoring can alert on both conditions: when expected text is missing and when unexpected text appears. This is a clean way to catch broken releases, missing UI components, or a banner that should have been removed.

Checks run on a schedule. Shorter intervals catch changes faster; longer intervals reduce noise and load. Start with a practical interval, then tighten it once you’ve confirmed the page is stable and the phrase is high-signal.

Keyword monitoring works best on publicly accessible pages. If a page requires authentication, a common approach is to monitor a public status/health endpoint, a logged-out page that still reflects system state, or a dedicated monitoring URL that doesn’t require a session.

If a site blocks automated requests, checks may fail or return a challenge page instead of the real content. If you control the site, allow monitoring for the URL you configured or provide a small monitoring-friendly page with a stable text signal.

Yes—this is exactly where choosing the right phrase matters. Avoid text tied to timestamps or personalization, and pick a phrase that only changes when the state you care about changes. If the page is inherently noisy, monitoring a simpler, more stable URL is often the easiest fix.

Matching is based on the text you configure and what the page returns. If capitalization varies, use a phrase that appears consistently (or update the phrase to match what’s actually rendered). When in doubt, test the phrase against the real page content you expect.

Keyword monitoring is designed for web pages. If a URL serves a PDF or another non-HTML file, text extraction and matching can be unreliable. When possible, monitor an HTML page that reflects the same information.

Keyword monitoring checks for text. Visual change monitoring compares screenshots or rendered pixels. If the thing you care about can be expressed as a phrase (“maintenance”, “out of stock”, “error”), keyword monitoring is usually simpler and less noisy.

UpDog focuses on the text signals you configure. If you want to catch a change, pick phrases that represent the change you care about (or phrases that should never appear). This keeps alerts intentional and avoids flagging harmless changes like layout tweaks.

No. This is content monitoring for a URL you provide. UpDog checks whether text is present on that page and alerts when your match/no-match rules flip.

Start with one high-impact page and one high-signal phrase. For many teams that’s the homepage (watch for “error” or “maintenance”) or a key product page (watch for “out of stock” or “available now”). Once you trust the signal, expand to a few more pages.

Yes—and it’s a strong pattern. Uptime monitoring tells you whether the endpoint responds at all, while keyword monitoring tells you whether it’s responding with the right content. Together they catch both hard outages and “looks up but broken” failures.