Keyword monitoring
Verify the page actually contains what it should.
A keyword monitor fetches a page and checks that an expected word or phrase is present. A 200 status does not always mean the page is healthy.
How it works
UptimeAlien requests the URL and searches the response body for your keyword; a miss marks the monitor down even when the HTTP status is OK.
When to use it
- When your framework serves error pages with HTTP 200 and an up/down check notices nothing
- Checking after every deploy that the cart button or the login form is still in the HTML
- Placing a marker rendered from live data, so an empty database cannot pass as a healthy, merely empty page
- Spotting a host's maintenance page, because your expected text is not on it
What you get
Keyword presence, response time, uptime and incidents.
Example
https://acme.com/login: body must contain Sign in
Frequently asked questions
What is keyword monitoring?
A keyword monitor requests a URL and searches the response body for a string you define. If the string is missing, the check fails, even when the server returned HTTP 200.
Why isn't a status code enough?
Plenty of failures return 200: a friendly error page, a blank template because the database is down, a login form replaced by a maintenance notice, or a CMS serving an empty page. Only the content reveals those.
What makes a good keyword?
Something that only appears when the page is genuinely working: a button label behind a database query, a product name, or a marker rendered from live data. Avoid text that also appears in your error page.
Can I use it to detect defacement or unexpected changes?
Indirectly. If the expected marker disappears, the monitor fails. It checks for the presence of your string rather than diffing the whole page.