Why track changes to a web page?
Some of the most useful facts in marketing sit on other people's web pages. A competitor's pricing page tells you what you're being compared against. Their homepage headline tells you how they want to be known this quarter. A partner's integration page, a marketplace listing, or a review site's ranking can all change without anyone telling you.
Most teams handle this by checking by hand. Someone opens the competitor's pricing page every Monday, or remembers to look before a sales call. That works until the week nobody looks, which is usually the week the price changed. Then a prospect mentions it before you knew.
Page-change monitors were built to fix this. They take a copy of the page, take another copy later, and alert you to any difference. The trouble is that pages change constantly in small ways. A new testimonial, a footer link, or a date stamp all count as differences, so the alerts pile up and people stop reading them.
The fix is to watch a value instead of a page. You decide what you'd actually act on, such as the Team plan's monthly price, and the monitor tells you only when that changes. Deciding whether a difference on the page is that value changing is a judgment call, and that's the part an AI agent handles well. It can read the page the way you would and recognize "$59 a month" as a new price for the Team plan, even if the page layout moved around it.
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Keeping watch on the pages that matter to your marketing is part of that job.
How Kite tracks changes to a web page
Kite starts with a request in your own words. You tell it the page and the value you care about, and Kite turns that into a standing watch. A standing watch is a saved instruction that Kite checks on a schedule and that stays quiet until its condition is met.
Before it saves the watch, Kite opens the page and reads it the way a signed-out visitor would. It confirms that the page shows the content you named, records the current value and the date it saw it, and checks that none of your existing watches already covers the request. That first read becomes the starting point every later check compares against.
From then on, each check reads the page again and looks at what is new since earlier reads. If nothing on the page is new, the check ends there. If something is new, Kite judges it against your request and tells you only when the value you named has changed.
- Name the value you care about
- Check the page on a schedule
- Judge whether the change matters
- Watch for new items on pages that list them
- Get told where you already work
- Act on what changed
- Keep track of every watch
Name the value you care about
A useful web page watch names a specific value on a specific page. Kite asks for that because "tell me when this page changes" gives it nothing to judge against, and on most pages it would fire on every small edit. These requests work well:
- "Tell me when Larkspur changes the price of its Team plan."
- "Tell me when Larkspur's homepage headline changes."
- "Tell me if Larkspur drops the free plan from its pricing page."
- "Tell me when the Starter plan on this page stops including 5 seats."
If you ask Kite to watch a page without saying what matters, it asks which values you care about before it saves anything. If your team's knowledge base already names the competitor and its pricing page, Kite can suggest the page and the plans worth watching so you only need to confirm them.
Kite watches the exact page that shows the value. A price belongs on the pricing page, and a headline belongs on the homepage, so a watch for each one targets that page directly rather than the site as a whole.
Check the page on a schedule
Kite checks a web page every six hours by default. If you need to hear sooner, ask it to check every hour, which is the most often a page watch can run. You can change the schedule at any time by asking, for example, "Check the Larkspur pricing watch every hour."
Each check reads the page as it stands at that moment. Kite reads what the page actually says, so a price shown as "$59/mo" or "59 dollars per month, billed annually" is still recognized as a price for the plan you named.
Kite reads public pages only. If a page shows a sign-in screen, an access-denied message, or an error instead of its content, Kite tells you when you set up the watch rather than saving one that would never see anything. Video pages, such as YouTube links, can't be watched for changes.
Judge whether the change matters
When a check finds something new on the page, Kite reads it against the request you gave and decides whether it's the change you asked about. This is where watching a value pays off, because most of what changes on a page isn't relevant to you.
Say Kite is watching the price of Larkspur's Team plan, which it recorded at $49 a month. On the next check, Larkspur has added a customer logo and reworded its FAQ, so Kite stays quiet. A week later, the Team plan shows $59 a month. Kite tells you the old price, the new price, the date it saw each one, and the link to the page.
The same judgment applies to other values. A headline watch fires when the main headline says something new, not when a banner rotates above it. A watch on a plan's features fires when a feature disappears from that plan, not when another plan changes.
After a watch reports a change, it rests for a day before it checks again. That keeps one price change from producing a string of alerts while the page settles.
Watch for new items on pages that list them
Some pages are lists of dated items rather than a single value, such as a blog, a changelog, a press page, or a careers page. For these, Kite watches for new items posted after its previous check, and it judges each new item against your request.
"Tell me when Larkspur publishes a changelog entry about integrations" fires on a new entry about integrations. It doesn't fire on a new entry about a bug fix. That lets you follow a competitor's product releases without reading every update they post.
Get told where you already work
Kite sends each alert to the place your team works with it. Each alert says what changed, where it changed, and why it matches what you asked for, with the link to the page.
- In Slack. If you asked for the watch in a Slack thread, Kite replies in that thread, so the alert sits next to the conversation that started it. After a few months, or if you asked somewhere else, it posts in your team's Slack channel.
- By email. If your team works with Kite in the Kite web app and hasn't added Kite to Slack, Kite emails the alert to the person who set up the watch. Replying to the email continues the conversation with Kite.
Related pages
- Set up custom alerts for anything you track: Watch Slack channels, web searches, and numbers in your own tools, as well as web pages.
- Track competitors' pricing changes Coming soon Follow every plan and price a competitor offers and see what each change means for your own pricing.
Act on what changed
A page change is usually the start of some work, and Kite can take that work on in the same conversation. Reply to the alert and tell Kite what you want done.
When a competitor raises a price, Kite can update the pricing figures on your comparison page and prepare a short note your sales team can use on calls. When a competitor's headline shifts to a new audience, Kite can compare it with your positioning and suggest whether your homepage should respond. Kite shows you any change to your own website before it goes live, and it publishes once you approve.
Keep track of every watch
Kite keeps every watch on a list with the reason it was created. Ask "What are you watching for us?" and Kite lists each watch, the page it reads, what makes it fire, how often it checks, and whether it has checked yet. Ask "Why are you watching Larkspur's homepage?" and Kite tells you the reason it recorded when the watch was set up.
You manage watches by asking:
- Change how often it checks. "Check that one every hour."
- Pause or resume it. "Pause the Larkspur watch until after our launch."
- Stop it. "Stop watching Larkspur's homepage." When someone on your team pauses or stops a watch, Kite doesn't turn it back on by itself.
The page a watch reads and the request it judges against are set when the watch is created. To watch a different page or change what makes a watch fire, such as "Only tell me about price changes on the Team and Business plans," Kite stops the old watch and sets up a new one once you agree.
What you get
A watch written as a sentence
Each watch reads like the request you made, such as "Tell me when Larkspur changes the price of its Team plan," so anyone on your team can tell what it does.
A recorded starting value
Kite notes the value it saw and the date when you set up the watch, so every alert can show you exactly what changed.
Alerts only for changes that matter
New logos, reworded copy, and rotating banners don't trigger an alert. A changed price, plan, or headline does.
Alerts with the details
Each one gives the old value, the new value, the link, and why it matches your request, in Slack or by email.
A next step when you want one
Reply to any alert and Kite can start the work it calls for, from updating a comparison page to briefing your sales team.
How to get started
Start by telling Kite which page you keep checking by hand and what you look for there. You might say, "Tell me when Larkspur changes its pricing," or "Let me know if this headline changes," followed by the link.
Kite reads the page, asks about anything it needs to pin down, such as which plans you care about, and then tells you what it will watch, how often it will check, and where you'll hear about it. Watching a public web page needs no other account connected.
You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack. Teams that add Kite to Slack get their alerts in Slack. Teams that work in the Kite web app get their alerts by email.
If you'd rather get a regular summary whether or not anything changed, such as a competitor pricing roundup every Monday morning, ask Kite for a scheduled report instead. A watch is for the times you only want to hear from Kite when something changes.
Integrations used to track changes to a web page
Kite reads public web pages with its own built-in tools, so a web page watch needs nothing connected. Slack comes in when you want your alerts to arrive where your team already talks.
Common questions
How is this different from Visualping or Distill?
Visualping and Distill are page-change monitors. They take repeated snapshots of a page, compare them, and alert you to differences, and both let you narrow a watch to part of the page. They're a good fit when you want to watch many pages at once or see a side-by-side view of what changed. Kite works from a sentence describing the value you care about, judges each change against it, and stays quiet when nothing relevant has changed. Because Kite is also your marketer, the alert can turn into work, such as updating your comparison page with a competitor's new price. For more options, see The best Google Alerts alternatives for tracking anything that matters to your business Coming soon .
Can Kite tell me about any change at all on a page?
Kite needs to know which part of the page matters, because "any change" on most pages includes dates, banners, and small wording edits. If you ask for any change, Kite asks which values you care about, such as a price, a plan name, or a headline, and watches those. On pages that list dated items, such as a blog or a changelog, it watches for new items instead.
Can Kite show me how a page has changed in the past?
A watch starts from the day you set it up, so it tells you about changes from then on. To see how a competitor's website looked months or years ago, Kite can read archived versions of the site and compare how its positioning, products, or pricing changed over time. See See how a competitor's website changed over time.
Can Kite watch a page I have to sign in to see?
No. Kite reads pages the way a signed-out visitor sees them, so a page behind a login shows it a sign-in screen. Kite tells you this when you set up the watch. When the page belongs to a tool Kite can connect to, such as HubSpot or Stripe, Kite can watch that data through the connected account instead. See Set up custom alerts for anything you track.
Is it legal to monitor a competitor's website for changes?
Checking a competitor's public pages is a routine part of competitive research, and it's what any visitor does when they open the page. Kite reads only public pages, reads them signed out, and checks no more often than once an hour. If a particular site's terms of use concern you, check them or ask your own legal advisor.
Is there a free way to track changes to a web page?
You can track changes by hand for free by bookmarking the page and checking it on a schedule, though it's easy to miss a week. Kite's free plan includes usage, so you can set up a web page watch and see how it works before deciding whether to pay.