Keyword monitoring for the pages your clients care about
A status code says whether the server answered. The text on the page tells you whether it answered with the right page.
Broken pages often answer 200 OK.
A WordPress site with a lost database connection, a shop showing "Fatal error" in the footer, a home page replaced by a defacement: in all three the server can still send a 200, and a plain monitor stays green.
The fix is old and simple. Look for a word that must be there, and for the words that should never be there.
Two text checks on every request.
Expected text
You write a word or sentence that must appear, such as the company name in the footer. If a check does not find it, you get a warning.
Unwanted text
You write the text that must never appear, such as "Database error" or "Fatal error". If it shows up, the alert is critical and stays open while the text is there.
Closed on their own
Each alert closes at the first check where the text is right again. The two are tracked separately.
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Start free trialFrequently asked questions
Which text should I watch for?
For the expected text, something stable that only the real page has, like the company name or a footer line. For the unwanted text, the error messages of the CMS: "Database error", "Fatal error", "Error establishing a database connection".
Does it work with HEAD requests?
No. A HEAD answer has no body, so with HEAD the text checks are skipped. Use GET for pages you want to read.
Is the search case-sensitive?
No. "fatal error" also finds "Fatal Error".
Goes well with
- Uptime monitoring for your clients' WordPress and Joomla sitesChecks as often as every minute, response times and a check of the page text.
- API and URL monitoring, beyond the home pageMethod, headers, down codes and a JSON field with its expected value.
- SEO spam in the sitemap: the sign a site has been hackedBloated sitemaps, spam URLs and robots.txt files that block Google.
- SSL certificate expiry monitoring, site by siteAlerts before expiry, and at once if the certificate is invalid.
Try it on your clients' sites.
Connect your first sites today and see what SitePing finds on them.
- Every Complete feature except backups
- Up to 10 sites
- No credit card needed to start
- At the end you choose a plan or move to Free, and nothing is charged
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