Website keyword monitoring: detect broken pages that return 200

Why check page text as well as HTTP status

Many application failures still return HTTP 200. A reverse proxy can serve a maintenance page, a template can render without its data, or an application can replace the intended page with a friendly error message. A basic availability check sees a response and reports UP.

A search string gives the check a simple content assertion: the response is considered UP only when the requested page succeeds and contains the expected text.

Choose a reliable search string

Use a phrase that identifies the correct page and exists in the original HTML response. The search is exact and case-sensitive, so capitalization and punctuation must match.

• Prefer a page heading, product name, company name, or stable navigation label.
• Use enough text to avoid matching an unrelated error page.
• Avoid timestamps, changing totals, personalized text, and content loaded later by JavaScript.
• After a redesign or translation change, update the checker before removing the old wording.

Set up the checker

1. Choose Webpage when creating a checker.
2. Enter the final public URL, including https://.
3. Paste the expected phrase into Search string.
4. Select Check state now. If it reports DOWN, inspect spelling and confirm the text exists in the server response.
5. Choose the consecutive-down threshold and email behavior, then save.

Read a keyword failure

If the request succeeds but the phrase is missing, the incident history records the HTTP protocol, response code, and the reason that the search text was not found. A limited copy of the received HTML is retained for that incident.

Select View page to inspect exactly what Simple Ping saw. The source is shown without rendering it. Look for a maintenance message, authentication redirect, CDN error, empty application shell, or unexpected language. Once the phrase returns, the incident receives its recovery time automatically.