Page Monitoring
Watch the pages that matter most and get told when their title, canonical, indexing, redirects, content or a part such as a price changes, with a before and after.
Some pages are too important to break: your pricing page, your checkout, your top landing pages, your legal text. A small change on one of them can cost you traffic or sales. For example, a CMS update can add a noindex tag, a developer can change a redirect, or a price can change by mistake.
Page Monitoring watches the pages that you select. VitalSentinel checks each page on a schedule, keeps every version, and tells you what changed, with a before and after.
What it answers
- Did something change on my most important pages, and when?
- Can the change hurt the page in search or for visitors?
- Did the title, canonical, robots directives or main content change?
- Does the page still load, or does it redirect somewhere else now?
- Did the price or stock status on a product page change?
- After a site move, do my old pages redirect to the correct new address?
- Did Google clicks change after a change on the page?
How it works
- You verify your domain. Page Monitoring starts only after you verify that you own the domain. VitalSentinel does not fetch or store any page before that.
- You add the pages to watch. Enter the addresses, upload a CSV file, or click Watch in Page Monitoring in another module. See Adding pages.
- VitalSentinel checks each page on a schedule. You select how often for each page, for example every 24 hours. The first check runs within about 5 minutes. Each check reads the HTML that your server sends, and it also loads the page in a browser to see the page after JavaScript runs.
- VitalSentinel compares each check with the previous check. It records each change, for example "Now set to noindex" or "Title changed". Changes that can hurt the page in search or for visitors get the status Needs attention.
- You get told. The Changes screen lists all changes. Alerts and the change digest email tell you about the changes that you select.
Changes show from the second check. The first check records the starting point.
What VitalSentinel checks on a page
Each check records the fields of the page two times: in the HTML that your server sends, and after JavaScript runs.
| Area | Fields |
|---|---|
| Loading and redirects | HTTP status, error pages, short outages, redirects and the redirect target |
| Indexing | Meta robots, X-Robots-Tag, noindex, canonical (tag and HTTP header), the robots.txt verdict for Googlebot |
| Search basics | Title, meta description, H1 and other headings |
| Language | Page language and hreflang links |
| Structured data | Structured data types, errors and key properties |
| Content | The main text and its word count |
| Links and images | Navigation links, links in the main content, links to other sites, images, images without alt text, broken images |
| Scripts | Analytics tags and third-party scripts |
| Rendering | Blank pages, failed renders, JavaScript errors, files that failed to load, and AI readability |
| Response headers and speed | Content type, compression, HSTS, caching, Vary, Content Security Policy, Link header, viewport, time to first byte (TTFB) and page size |
| Your elements | Parts of the page that you select with a CSS selector, for example a price. See Page elements |
Some changes are minor, for example links that change on every visit or a small speed difference. VitalSentinel records them but shows them collapsed. Minor changes never set the page status.
Page Monitoring and Site Health Monitoring
Both modules use the same crawler, but they do different jobs:
| Page Monitoring | Site Health Monitoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | The pages that you select | A selection of pages from your whole site |
| What it reports | Every change on each page | Problems that affect many pages |
| Schedule | The interval that you select, for example every 4 hours | Each page about once a week, all day |
A page can be in both modules. If Site Health Monitoring finds an open issue on a watched page, the page shows a chip with the number of issues.
The crawler
Page Monitoring uses the VitalSentinel crawler, with the user agent VitalSentinel Bot/1.2 (+https://www.vitalsentinel.com/bot). The crawler obeys your robots.txt. If robots.txt blocks a watched page for the crawler, VitalSentinel cannot check it. To check the page, allow VitalSentinel-Bot in robots.txt.
If your site responds slowly or sets a Crawl-delay, VitalSentinel can check fewer pages each hour on your site. The page panel then shows a notice.
If a firewall blocks the crawler, see Monitoring IPs.
Plans and limits
Page Monitoring is available on every plan. The watched pages and Check now runs are counted for the whole workspace, for all domains. Custom elements are counted for each watched page.
| Free | Starter | Lite | Standard | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Watched pages (per workspace) | 5 | 10 | 100 | 500 | 1,000 |
| Check intervals | 24 hours | 24 hours | 24 hours, 12 hours, 4 hours | 24 hours, 12 hours, 4 hours | 24 hours, 12 hours, 4 hours |
| Custom elements (per watched page) | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| "Check now" runs per hour (per workspace) | 5 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Change history | 14 days | 12 months | 12 months | 12 months | 12 months |
- When you reach the limit of watched pages, you cannot add more pages. Remove a page or upgrade your plan.
- A paused page does not use a watched page.
- If you downgrade, VitalSentinel pauses the watched pages over the new limit and keeps the oldest pages. Pages with an interval that the new plan does not have get the fastest interval that the plan allows. See Billing.
The Billing page shows how many watched pages the workspace uses.
How far back the data goes
VitalSentinel keeps the stored checks and changes for 14 days on the Free plan and for 12 months on paid plans. Each record keeps the history period of the plan that was active when VitalSentinel saved it. See Data & Privacy.
When you stop watching a page, VitalSentinel keeps its stored history until the history expires. To delete the history immediately, use Delete this page's history in the page settings. See Danger zone.
Who can do what
- Owners and admins can add pages, change settings, run Check now, stop watching pages, and act on changes.
- Members can see the watched pages and the changes. They can also create their own alert rules.
Where to find it
Open a domain and select Page Monitoring in the Monitoring group of the sidebar. Before you verify the domain, the entry opens the verification screen. After verification, it has these pages:
| Page | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Pages | The watched pages, their status and the Needs a look card. See Watching Pages |
| Changes | All changes on all watched pages, newest first. See Changes |
| Settings | Defaults for new pages, default labels, top pages and ignored changes. See Settings |
Page Monitoring data is also available in the public API and the MCP server.
Next steps
Settings
Configure Site Health Monitoring - how many pages to check and which come first, page rules, pinned pages, robots.txt, exceptions, and crawler access.
Watching Pages
Add pages to Page Monitoring, read the Pages screen and page statuses, and use the watched page panel - changes, Google data, checks, page details and page settings.
