Uptime monitoring tells you if your site is reachable. But what if your site is up and serving the wrong content? A hacked page that's been defaced still returns a 200 status code. A broken template that shows a blank page is technically "up". An affiliate landing page whose offer expired now shows a generic placeholder.
This is what keyword monitoring is for.
How It Works
You add a monitor, set the type to "Keyword", and specify a word or phrase that should (or shouldn't) appear on the page. WebMon fetches the page on your check interval and scans the HTML response for that text. If the keyword disappears (or appears, depending on your setting), you get an alert.
That's it. No JavaScript rendering, no complex selectors - just a straightforward text check against the page source.
When Keyword Monitoring Makes Sense
Affiliate marketers - This is probably the most common use case I see. You're sending paid traffic to an offer page. If the advertiser pulls the offer, changes the landing page, or the tracking link breaks, your page might still load fine but the content you're promoting is gone. A keyword check on the offer headline or CTA text catches this immediately.
E-commerce product pages - If a key product goes out of stock and the page changes from "Add to Cart" to "Sold Out", a keyword monitor on "Add to Cart" will alert you. Useful if you're running ads to specific product pages.
Compliance text - Some industries require specific disclaimers, terms, or notices on their pages. A keyword monitor ensures that legally required text is always present.
Hack detection - Defaced websites often replace your content with something else entirely. If your homepage should always contain your company name and suddenly it doesn't, that's a very clear signal something is wrong.
Dynamic content validation - API-driven pages, live pricing, event listings - anything where the content is pulled from an external source. If that source goes down, your page might render without the key content. A keyword check catches the gap.
Match Types
You get two options:
- Contains - Alert when the keyword is NOT found on the page. Use this for text that should always be present ("Buy Now", your brand name, a required disclaimer).
- Not Contains - Alert when the keyword IS found on the page. Use this for text that should never appear ("Error", "404", "Sold Out", "Under Maintenance").
Both are case-insensitive by default, but you can toggle case sensitivity if you need an exact match.
Tips for Good Keywords
Pick something specific and stable. "Buy Now" is better than "the" for obvious reasons, but also better than a long paragraph that might get minor copy edits.
Avoid keywords that appear in navigation, headers, or footers unless that's specifically what you want to monitor. The check scans the entire page source, not just the visible content.
If you're monitoring an affiliate offer, use a word or phrase from the offer itself - not from your own wrapper page. You want to know when the upstream content changes, not when your own template renders.
Combining With HTTP Monitoring
The best setup for critical pages is both an HTTP monitor (is the page reachable?) and a keyword monitor (is the right content showing?). They check different things and you want to know about both.
For most people, HTTP monitoring alone covers 90% of cases. But if you're in a situation where the content matters as much as the availability - and you probably know if you are - keyword monitoring fills that gap nicely.
Add a keyword monitor from your dashboard - select "Keyword" as the type, enter the URL, and specify what text to watch for.