Monitor critical public URLs with scheduled checks from outside your infrastructure, and keep timestamped records of what each check observed. A failed probe is a reason to investigate—not, by itself, proof of a site-wide outage or its cause.
What website availability monitoring can—and cannot—tell you
Availability monitoring checks whether a service responds as expected from an external vantage point. For public websites, schedule HTTP or HTTPS requests to important pages and endpoints. A basic check can confirm a response status and, if configured, expected text in the response. Google Cloud’s uptime-check documentation describes these checks, including status and content validation: Google Cloud uptime checks.
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An HTTP check is not a full browser test. Google Cloud says standard uptime checks follow redirects and evaluate the final response, but do not load page assets or execute JavaScript. A successful response therefore does not establish that images, scripts, or a complete user journey work. If reliability depends on a browser-rendered workflow—such as signing in or completing checkout—add a browser or transaction-level check for that journey.
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A homepage-only check may miss a broken login, API, checkout, or other critical function. GOV.UK describes monitoring as a series of tests against systems or a service to assess status and signal when something is wrong. Apply that principle by selecting URLs and workflows that represent what your users depend on, rather than treating one landing page as coverage of the whole service. See the GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on monitoring service status.
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Set the success conditions deliberately
- Expected status: Decide which response codes count as success for each endpoint. Do not assume every URL should return the same code; redirects and endpoint-specific behavior may be intentional.
- Response content: Where appropriate, check for a stable piece of expected text as well as a successful status. This can help catch cases where a server responds but returns the wrong content.
- Check type: Use HTTP or HTTPS for public web responses, TCP where the requirement is a reachable port, and browser or transaction-level checks when client-side rendering or a user journey matters.
- Coverage: Include the services and routes whose failure would matter, such as a public API or checkout, not just the homepage.
Keep checks aligned to the requirement: a passing endpoint request confirms only the behavior that the check actually tests.
Interpret failures before declaring an outage
Treat a single failed probe as a signal to investigate. Probe paths can fail independently of the website: Google Cloud notes that temporary network congestion can cause one checker to fail, and under its default alert configuration one checker failure does not necessarily trigger a notification. Its uptime checks use multiple locations, making agreement or disagreement among locations useful context.
- Check whether other probe locations report the same failure.
- Compare the result with independent observations, such as application, CDN, DNS, hosting, or web-server logs.
- Review the response status, timing, and any content-validation result to understand what the probe actually saw.
- Record the first observed failure and the time service recovery is observed; distinguish those observed times from the unknown exact start or end of a problem between scheduled checks.
Consistent failures from multiple locations and corroborating service records provide stronger evidence of a public-facing incident than one failed request. Monitoring results still do not, on their own, prove the incident’s cause or full scope.
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Preserve the probe result alongside relevant operational records so that responders can reconstruct what happened. Capture the following where available:
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- The affected URL or endpoint and the check configuration, including the type of check and validation conditions.
- The timestamp and timezone, outcome, response code, and response-time result.
- The probe location or region and whether other probes agreed.
- The first observed failure and recovery time, clearly identified as observations.
- Relevant application, web-server, CDN, DNS, or hosting logs, plus incident actions and status updates.
Use a common time basis across monitoring and logs. The UK NCSC recommends synchronizing evidence and log sources to the same time server and timezone to help correlate events. It also advises knowing which log sources exist, how to retrieve them, who can retrieve them, and whether they are searchable. Where possible, keep archived logs extractable and consider central collection when it improves correlation. The NCSC recommends retaining logs ideally for at least three months where possible; that is guidance, not a universal legal retention period. See NCSC incident response technical capabilities guidance.
Keep logs useful and protect sensitive data
Monitoring is continuous observation for detection and alerting; logging is the retrospective record used to investigate. For API activity, the NCSC recommends recording relevant details such as timestamp, source IP, user identity, and endpoint, while avoiding passwords, API keys, access tokens, and personal data in logs. Choose fields appropriate to your service and protect incident records accordingly. See NCSC logging and monitoring guidance.
If an incident may matter for contractual, regulatory, or legal reasons, retain the original records and timestamps and follow the evidence-handling requirements that apply to your situation. The cited NCSC guidance discusses evidence capture where court action is likely; it does not establish a universal chain-of-custody standard for every jurisdiction.
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Compare services against the detection and investigation needs you have defined, rather than choosing on a headline uptime claim alone.
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| Area | What to check |
|---|---|
| Check coverage | Whether it supports the required HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, or browser-level checks. |
| Validation | Whether you can set expected status behavior and response-content assertions. |
| Probe behavior | Which locations are used and how the service handles disagreement among probes. |
| Incident detail | Whether alerts and history include response code, timing, location, and outcomes. |
| Records | How long incident history is retained and whether logs can be exported or retrieved. |
| Operations | Whether alert routing and integrations fit the way your team responds. |
For examples of vendor-described capabilities, Uptime.com says its HTTP(S) alerts include a response code and location codes for probe servers, with real-time analysis available; see Uptime.com HTTP(S) Check Basics. Nagios describes scheduled checks for availability, response time, and certificate or content health, with notifications through its alert channels; see Nagios website monitoring. These are descriptions from the vendors, not independent comparative tests; check current capabilities and terms before selecting a service.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Capture visual evidence of what a visitor saw
Monitoring results and logs record probe behavior; a screenshot can add a visual record of a page at capture time. It does not replace scheduled availability checks, logs, or corroboration, and a screenshot alone cannot establish the duration or cause of an outage.
For a browser-based capture, use a scheduled browser workflow against the relevant URL, capture the failure state, and preserve the capture alongside its timestamp, URL, and corresponding monitoring result. Check whether the browser can load the page and whether consent banners, popups, or chat widgets obscure the relevant content.
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ScreenshotNeo is a website screenshot API and MCP server for developers. A GET request with a URL returns a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF. Its clean-shot options accept cookie or consent banners like a visitor and remove 60+ known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before capture; each step can be turned off. Bot checks/CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and the response identifies the page verdict and billing status in headers. An MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client. The free plan includes 1,000 shots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots.
Example using cURL (replace the URL with the page you want to capture):
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does a screenshot prove how long a website was down?
No. It records what was visible at capture time; scheduled checks and incident records are needed to establish observed failure and recovery times.
How long should outage logs be kept?
The UK NCSC recommends retaining logs ideally for at least three months where possible. Your operational, contractual, regulatory, or legal needs may call for a different retention period.
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