Adding a site
A site is any website you want SiteAlert to watch. You can add as many as you like. Once a site is in, we crawl it every day and tell you when something changes.
Add your first (or next) site
Open My sites
Click My sites in the left menu, then Add a site.
Enter the domain
Type the website address, for example example.com. This is the only required field.
Give it a name (optional)
Add a display name like "Main marketing site" so it's easy to recognise when you have lots of sites.
Add your sitemap (optional)
If you know your sitemap URL, paste it in. If you leave it blank, we look for one automatically.
Choose how we crawl
Pick a crawl mode (see below), then click Add site.
After you add the site, we start discovering its pages right away. Give it a little time, big sites take a bit longer to map out.
How we find your pages
We build the list of pages to watch from your sitemap. A sitemap is a file most websites already have that lists their pages.
- You have a sitemap URL — paste it in and we use it directly. You can add more than one.
- You don't — leave it blank and we look in the usual spots (like
robots.txt) to find it for you.
Once we have your pages, you can fine-tune the list later, hiding sections you don't care about or grouping similar pages together. See Pages & site settings.
Crawl modes
When you add a site, you choose how politely we crawl:
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| Respect robots.txt | We follow the same rules search engines do and skip anything your site asks crawlers not to visit. This is the default and the safe choice. |
| Crawl freely | We crawl every page we find, even ones blocked in robots.txt. Only use this on sites you own and want fully covered. |
Only choose Crawl freely for websites you control. It tells SiteAlert to ignore the crawl rules a site publishes.
What happens next
Once your pages are discovered, the daily crawl takes over. The first crawl sets a baseline, and from the next one on, every change is compared and logged. Head to the changes timeline to watch them roll in, or set up your notifications so the important ones come to you.