# Website Change Intelligence Monitor (`woolly_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor`) Actor

Monitor public web pages and detect meaningful text, title, metadata, and link changes between runs.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/woolly\_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [sakthi kumar](https://apify.com/woolly_kingcrab) (community)
- **Categories:** Automation, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$0.20 / actor start

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Website Change Intelligence Monitor

Monitor public web pages and detect meaningful content changes between runs instead of repeatedly downloading and comparing pages yourself.

### What it detects

- Page title changes
- Meta-description changes
- Visible text changes
- Approximate text-change percentage
- Added / removed link counts
- Added / removed text samples
- Word-count changes
- Final URL changes after redirects
- `CHANGED`, `MAJOR_CHANGE`, or `UNCHANGED` status

The first run creates a **baseline**, so existing page content is not incorrectly reported as a new change.

### Use cases

- Competitor pricing-page monitoring
- Product-page change tracking
- Terms / policy monitoring
- Press / newsroom monitoring
- Documentation monitoring
- Landing-page monitoring
- Partnership / careers page monitoring
- Public company website intelligence

### How it works

1. Fetches each public page
2. Removes scripts, styles, and other non-content elements
3. Optionally monitors only a CSS-selected section
4. Normalizes visible text and links
5. Compares with the previous successful snapshot
6. Emits a concise summary plus detailed change records
7. Saves the new snapshot for the next run

### Input

- Up to 50 public HTTP/HTTPS URLs
- Stable Monitor ID
- Optional CSS content selector
- Optional CSS selectors to ignore
- Link tracking toggle
- Major-change threshold
- Text-size safety cap
- Optional baseline-detail output

### Output

Each page receives a summary with:

- Page title
- Final URL
- HTTP status
- Change signal
- Text-change percentage
- Word-count delta
- Added / removed link counts
- Snapshot hash
- Observation timestamp

When a page changes, a `PAGE_CHANGED` record also includes short added/removed text samples and changed metadata fields.

### Scheduling

Daily or every 6–12 hours is usually enough for business monitoring.

### Pricing

Recommended Store launch pricing:

- **$0.20 per Actor start**
- No additional per-result charge

There is no paid upstream API or Actor dependency.

### Reliability and safety

- Stateful comparison between runs
- Duplicate-change protection
- Fetch-all-before-state-mutation fail-closed behavior
- Existing state preserved if any target fails
- Redirect destinations are revalidated
- Local/private/reserved network destinations are rejected
- Maximum 50 URLs per run
- 5 MB response-size limit per page
- Configurable normalized-text cap
- No login credentials collected
- No browser automation or paid AI API required

### Limitations

V1 performs direct HTTP page fetching. Websites that render their useful content only through client-side JavaScript may require a future browser-enabled mode.

Some pages contain changing timestamps, counters, rotating content, or cookie banners. Use `ignoreSelectors` or `contentSelector` to reduce noisy changes.

### Why use this instead of a raw page scraper?

A raw scraper answers:

**"What does this page contain now?"**

Website Change Intelligence Monitor answers:

**"What changed since the previous check?"**

That makes the output much more useful for ongoing competitor and business intelligence.

### Responsible use

This Actor is intended for public pages. Users are responsible for ensuring their monitoring complies with applicable laws, website terms, and access policies.

# Actor input Schema

## `monitorId` (type: `string`):

Stable ID for this monitoring configuration. Reuse it for scheduled runs.

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Up to 50 public http/https pages.

## `contentSelector` (type: `string`):

Optional CSS selector to monitor only a specific page section, for example main or #pricing.

## `ignoreSelectors` (type: `array`):

Optional page elements to remove before comparison, such as .cookie-banner or .timestamp.

## `trackLinks` (type: `boolean`):

Detect added and removed links.

## `majorChangeThresholdPct` (type: `number`):

Text-change percentage at or above which a change is classified as MAJOR.

## `maxTextCharacters` (type: `integer`):

Safety cap for normalized page text used in comparison.

## `emitBaseline` (type: `boolean`):

Off by default. First run creates state without reporting the existing page as a change.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "monitorId": "store-healthcheck",
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com/"
  ],
  "contentSelector": "",
  "ignoreSelectors": [],
  "trackLinks": true,
  "majorChangeThresholdPct": 20,
  "maxTextCharacters": 200000,
  "emitBaseline": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Dataset containing SUMMARY, CHANGE, and optional BASELINE records.

## `runSummary` (type: `string`):

Compact run summary.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("woolly_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("woolly_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call woolly_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,woolly_kingcrab/website-change-intelligence-monitor"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/mDnERmpPRhsxdgpao/builds/14ptg4sLUy1uL7Txx/openapi.json