<b>Q: My monitor says 200 OK but the page is actually broken. What gives?</b>

<b>Q: My monitor says 200 OK but the page is actually broken. What gives?</b>

A: A 200 status only means the server answered, not that it answered correctly. Apps love to return 200 on an error page, a maintenance screen, or a blank shell where the database call quietly failed.

Upgrade from a status-code check to a content check. Tell your monitor to look for a specific string that only appears when the page truly works, like a product price, a logged-in element, or a footer copyright line. If that keyword is missing, treat it as down even with a 200.

Better still, also flag if a known error phrase appears, like "Exception" or "Service Unavailable."

Natural follow-up: pick a keyword that's stable across deploys, so a harmless copy change doesn't trigger a false outage.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments.