Monitor a subject over time
An investigation is often lost for want of monitoring : the page that mattered gets edited, the post is filled, the listing is pulled, and nobody saw it. Monitoring is built in layers, from simplest to most precise : a keyword alert, then page watching, then a reconstructed feed when the site offers none.
The tools, in order
- 01Google Alertsfree
Free and immediate on keywords, enough for widely covered subjects
Google's free monitoring service that sends email notifications when new results matching a keyword appear in Google's index — ideal for continuous subject monitoring.
- 02
Watches a precise part of a page and only warns when it genuinely changes
Open-source website change monitoring tool. Track changes to any web page and receive notifications. Useful for monitoring targets, tracking updates and evidence collection.
- 03VisualPingfreemium
Compares the visual rendering, useful where the text does not move but the display does
Website monitoring platform that alerts on page content or visual changes.
- 04RSS-Bridgefree
Builds a feed from a site that publishes none, which makes monitoring automatable
Generates an RSS feed from sites that no longer publish one, including several social platforms.
- 05Shodan Monitorfreemium
Warns when a new service appears on a watched infrastructure
Continuous monitoring of your internet-exposed assets via Shodan: alerts on new open ports and vulnerabilities.
The pitfall to avoid
Monitoring that is too broad stops itself : after fifty alerts a day you stop reading them, and that is precisely the day the right one arrives. Three narrow watches that get read beat one general alert that gets ignored.
🧭 The full plan
The copilot orders every step from your starting point, with pre-filled queries.
📖 The guides
Detailed methods by investigation type.