By Gary Price , January 3, 2006
Often a small change to a web page is a clue that something big has happened or will happen, and automated tracking tools alert you the moment something has changed.
My friend and librarian colleague, Phil Bradley, points to a blog post by Marshall Kirkpatrick that looks at tools and services that alert you to page changes.
First and by far the best (nothing comes even close), is client software called WebSite-Watcher (WSW).
I've been using WSW for years and it's an essential tool. I couldn't work without it. Why do I like it? Here are a few of the many reasons.
A two week free trial is available, for Windows only.
The other service I'm currently testing is a web-based alerting service from noted web-developer, Marc Fest, of
QuickBrowse fame. It's called Trackle. While it's not nearly as powerful as Website-Watcher but Fest always creates useful tools. Trackle can also monitor pages on an hourly basis. So far, I'm very impressed. Trackle also has a free trial; it's web based so works with any operating system.
WatchThatPage.com is not a bad service though it can be a bit tricky to get it all working right, but the price is right (free). However, the fact that it's donation-ware site scares me a bit. If I'm going to invest the time and effort to import and organize lots of sites for tracking, I want to know it's going to be around for a while. That said, it has been online for several years but as we all know, things can change rapidly.
Kirkpatrick also writes about TrackEngine. This is a service that I haven't used but several colleagues tell me it's quite impressive. The biggest downside is that tracking many pages can get expensive.
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