Keep an eye on Competitor websites

[jmwebguy]

We want to setup multiple computer monitors; one for each of our competitors websites (3 total). Considering we don't control their websites and cannot add a REFRESH tag, we need something that will automatically refresh each website automatically. All we care about is seeing the homepage. We just want to know when it's updated. (For those that need to know, we write news stories, so we want to be FIRST in everything). Anyone know of a good way to do this? Leave expenses out of the equation for now. We're just trying to see if this is doable.

[engine]

Yup, you could just use a bot that checks for an updated page at intervals you set. Just remember that you'll draw attention to your activity if it's too frequent.

[jdMorgan]

And that if they know what they're doing, they can easily serve you 'special' stale pages and use other 'disinformation' techniques...

I'd suggest an RSS feed, where available.

Jim

[borntobeweb]

Install Opera
Open desired page
Right-click on page
Select whatever "reload every" option you like.

No comments about your intentations, lol.

[Gibble]

There's a plugin to do that in FF as well. Or you enclose it in a frame with a refresh...probably the simplest approach if they don't break their site out of frames already.