Settings

To open the settings, select Site Health Monitoring > Settings in the sidebar. The settings have three tabs:

Only workspace owners and admins can change the settings. Other members see "Ask a workspace owner or admin to change this."

Pages to checkCopy Anchor Link

How many pages we checkCopy Anchor Link

The subtitle of this card tells you how VitalSentinel checks your site now. For example, "We check all 1,200 pages in your sitemap every week."

• If your sitemap has the same number of pages as the limit or fewer, VitalSentinel checks every page in it.
• If your sitemap has more pages, VitalSentinel checks a selection. You decide which pages come first.

VitalSentinel checks the pages at the speed of your plan. If you check fewer pages, each page gets a check more often.

To change the settings:

1. In Pages to check, enter the number of pages. The minimum is 100. The maximum is the limit of your plan (see Plans and limits). The hint under the field shows how often each page will get a check.

2. In Which pages come first, select an option:

   Option	Pages that come first
   Balanced	A mix of your important pages and pages from every section of your site
   Most clicks from Google	The pages that get the most visitors from Google. Needs Google Search Console
   Most visited	The pages that your visitors view most. Needs Web Analytics
   Pages in your sitemap	The pages that your sitemap lists

3. Click Save.

Which pages come first has an effect only when your sitemap has more pages than VitalSentinel checks.

Page rulesCopy Anchor Link

Page rules include or exclude pages by their address. There are three types of rule:

To add a rule:

1. Click Add rule.
2. In What should happen, select the type of rule.
3. In Pages matching, enter a pattern.
4. Click Add rule.

The rule saves immediately. To remove a rule, click the remove button on its row.

Patterns:

• A pattern matches the path and the query from the start. For example, /blog/ matches /blog/a?x=1.
• * matches any characters. End the pattern with $ to match exactly.
• Patterns are case-sensitive and cannot contain spaces.

You can add up to 50 patterns for each type of rule.

Pinned pagesCopy Anchor Link

Pinned pages are always in the selection, and they get a check more often than the other pages. Pin the pages that you can least afford to break, for example your homepage and checkout.

To pin a page:

1. Click Pin a page.
2. In Page address, enter the full address of a page on this site.
3. Click Pin page.

You can also pin a page from the Pages card on the Overview. Click Check this page every day on its row.

The header shows how many pins you used, for example "3 of 50 pinned". The number of pins depends on your plan. To remove a pin, click Unpin.

robots.txtCopy Anchor Link

The VitalSentinel crawler always obeys your robots.txt. It never opens a page that robots.txt blocks for it. You cannot change this.

Turn on Include pages robots.txt blocks to list and check pages that robots.txt hides from Google, for example a page in a blocked folder. Pages that robots.txt blocks for the VitalSentinel crawler stay in the list, but the crawler never opens them. For these pages, VitalSentinel can only tell you that they are blocked. The change takes effect in one day or less.

Phone siteCopy Anchor Link

This card shows only when your homepage sends phone visitors to a different host, for example m.example.com. Use it to also check that host.

ExceptionsCopy Anchor Link

Normal for this siteCopy Anchor Link

This card lists the issue types that you told VitalSentinel are normal. VitalSentinel does not raise them again.

A rule comes from one of two places:

• You selected This is normal… > On every page, now and later on an issue.
• You added a rule on this card.

To add a rule:

1. Click Add rule.
2. In Issue type, select an issue type, or Any issue type.
3. Optional: in Only on pages matching, enter a pattern, for example /category/*. Leave it empty for every page. * matches any characters.
4. In How long, select Never ends, For 7 days, For 30 days or For 90 days.
5. Click Add rule.

To change a rule, click the edit button on its row, change the values, then click Save changes. To delete a rule, click Delete. VitalSentinel then raises the matching issues again.

Skip robots.txt alerts for AI botsCopy Anchor Link

If you block or allow some AI bots on purpose, turn them on here. VitalSentinel then does not raise an issue when your robots.txt changes for them. Their verdicts stay on the AI readability page.

To select single bots, open Choose single bots on a group, then turn on each bot.

Crawler accessCopy Anchor Link

Crawler access cardCopy Anchor Link

This card shows whether VitalSentinel can reach your site now:

When the state is not Healthy, the card shows Next check, Last check and Last success. When the state is Blocked, it also shows Blocked by (the firewall, if VitalSentinel knows it) and Where (The whole site or Some pages).

To check now, click Check now. When the crawler is blocked, the button is I’ve allowlisted you – check again. The result shows in about 30 seconds.

Allowlisting our crawlerCopy Anchor Link

If a firewall, CDN or security plugin blocks the crawler, allow it:

Match the user agent on the text VitalSentinel Bot, without the version number. Then your rule works for future versions too.

When the crawler is blocked, the card also shows numbered steps for your firewall, if VitalSentinel knows it. For example, Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva, AWS WAF, Sucuri, Wordfence, Vercel or Azure WAF. For any other firewall or bot filter:

1. Allow the requests whose user agent contains VitalSentinel Bot.
2. Also allow the VitalSentinel IP addresses, so that nobody can copy the rule with a fake user agent.
3. Save the rule. The next check finds the change.

For more steps, see How to allowlist.

RelatedCopy Anchor Link