Tracking changes to web page content

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It is difficult enough tracking down relevant and useful sites, but keeping up with changes to the pages is an impossible task when you have more than a dozen or so to monitor. Link checkers such as Xenu Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html) can alert you to pages that have disappeared or that are redirecting users to another site, but changes to the content are equally if not more important.

There are many services that track web page content for changes. Some are free whilst other priced services may offer limited facilities as a free taster.

This review looks at two types of services: web based services and software programs for PCs and Intranets.

Web based services

Change Detection

URL: http://www.changedetection.com/

This is a free service allowing you to track an unlimited number of pages. The frequency of the alerts can be daily, weekly or monthly and you can choose to only have alerts for "sizeable changes", when content has been added or removed, or for specific keywords. The email merely alerts you to the fact that there have been changes; you have to click on a link in the email to view them in the Change Detection web site. RSS as well as email alerts avialable.

ChangeDetect

URL: http://www.changedetect.com/

The free trial version of this service allows you to track a maximum of 5 pages a week and marks web page text for you with color-coded highlights of what has changed. The free trial lasts for two weeks. You can receive web page change notifications via your email, pager, ICQ or text messaging. The subscription services allow you to track more pages and password protected pages. ChangeDetect Personal costs USD 1.95 a month and tracks 10 web pages. ChangeDetect Plus costs USD 14.95 a month for 100 web pages and allows you to set up keyword and phrase notification triggers. ChangeDetect Professional costs USD 39.95 a month for 500 web pages with content checked twice-daily.

FollowThatPage

URL: http://www.followthatpage.com/

The free service provides 100 daily page checks and 1 hourly check. You can track additions, deletions, Google page rank, keywords, and sections of a page. Alerts are sent to you by email.

Google Reader

URL: http://www.google.com/reader

Google's RSS Reader now has an option that will allow you to track changes to most web pages. All you need to do is log in to Google and open Google Reader, click on Add a subscription, and then enter the URL of the page you want to track. Google says that it checks pages "periodically" and reports on "significant" changes. Neither term is defined. The feedback that I have had so far is that it does not pick up every change and even major changes are not always identified.

Infominder

URL: http://www.infominder.com/

The free triak tracks up to 10 pages free of charge and allows you to associate categories and descriptions with a "minder". Within the advanced options you can specify how often, in days, the page is to be checked. The most frequent allowed for free is every 1 day. You can also specify the minimum number of changes that must occur before you are notified and any keywords or phrases that must appear in the changes.

There is no information on the web site about prices of any of the hosted or server versions. You have to contact imorph.com for further details. The Infominder web pages don't appear to have been updated since 2007 which does not inspire confidence.

Page2RSS

URL: http://page2rss.com

Page2RSS tracks web pages for changes and notifies you of those changes by RSS. Simply type in the URL of the page you wish to track and then add the feed URL to your favourite feed reader. Excellent tool for pages that do not offer their own RSS feeds.

Track Engine

URL: http://www.trackengine.com/

Priced service only. "Big Breakfast" costs US $4.95 a month for 50 bookmarks, "Just Coffee" at US $19.95 a year for 10 bookmarks.

Watch That Page

URL: http://www.watchthatpage.com/

This is a free service run by ATS Consulting, a Norwegian company that specialises in software development. You can track an unlimited number of pages, which can be grouped into folders and tracked on a daily or weekly basis. There is a keyword matching option that filters the changes that are relevant to you, for example if you are only looking for news where a certain term or phrase occurs such as a company or a product name. Channels enable you to divide your pages into groups based on importance or content type. Each channel can have different properties: some can have keyword matching and daily reports whilst others can be checked less frequently and report all changes. Email alerts can include the text that has changed on your pages or just list the URLs of pages that have changed. If you are a professional or heavy user, you are required to pay a fee. Watchthatpage will notify you by email if you fall into the heavy user category.

Desktop programs

Copernic Tracker

URL: http://www.copernic.com/en/products/tracker/

Copernic Tracker is a tracking program that costs US $49.95. Once installed on your PC it enables you to track any number of pages on external sites and intranets. You can track changed words, new links or images. There is a useful advanced query form for tracking specific words within pages, Boolean and other search operators (AND, OR, NEAR).

Copies of page revisions are stored locally so that you can compare changes that occurred in the past and add your own notes for tracked pages and each of their revisions. There are four pre-set tracking schedules: Multiple Times per Day, On a Daily Basis, On a Weekly Basis and On a Monthly Basis. Alerts can be a tray icon, desktop alert or notification message, SMS notification, email report with the tracked page contents and changes highlighted.

Internet Owl

URL:http://www.internetowl.com/

As well as general changes to a page you can track the page for the appearance or deletion of specified text, or track selected areas of the page. You can view changes from within the program or in your browser and be alerted via email, a pop-up on your desktop or a sound. The default checking frequency - minutes, hours or days - can be changed as can the frequency for individual pages. Price: 29.95 USD. 30 day free trial.

Update Patrol

URL: http://www.updatepatrol.com/

Price is US $49.95 for a personal license. Free trial available.

Update Scannner for Firefox

URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3362

Free add-on for Firefox

Website Watcher

URL: http://aignes.com/

The full version of this software is available on a 30 day free trial. It tracks an unlimited number of pages and you can choose to ignore HTML tags, images/banners, numbers and dates. You can enter user names and passwords for password protected pages that you wish to track. Pages can be checked once a day, once a week, or on a specified day or days of the week. You can even specify the checking frequency during a day either in hours or minutes.

This is the only service that enables you to track entire sites without having to specify each page individually (not available in the Basic Edition). As well as web pages you can track RSS and Atom feeds, but this feature is not really a replacement for a fully fledged RSS reader if you are a serious news junkie.

Prices are 29.95 Euros for the Basic Edition, 49.95 for the Personal Edition, 99 Euros for a single user Business licence, 1990 Euros for a site license and 9990 Euros for an enterprise licence.