My monitor alerts me to changes for text that is not similar. The alert was established to monitor parts of the page and the comparison text was not selected. How can this be resolved?
@amyh Thanks for reaching out. To better understand why you’re receiving alerts for unrelated text, could you help clarify the following:
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Are you monitoring a regular webpage or something like a PDF or embedded content?
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Does the page load all at once, or does it require scrolling to load multiple sections?
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If you’re able to share the URL of the page and let us know exactly which section you’re trying to monitor, that would help greatly in diagnosing the issue.
These details will help us guide you with the most accurate solution — whether it involves refining the selection, applying conditions, using macros, or in some cases, simply increasing the “Wait for duration” setting to allow the page to load fully before checking.
In the meantime, feel free to review our guide on how to eliminate false alerts:
https://distill.io/docs/web-monitor/eliminate-false-alerts/
Hello,
The following are answers to your questions as well as a screenshot of what should be monitored versus what the monitor is comparing too.
- Yes, the monitor is for a regular webpage.
- The page loads all at once.+
- The URL the monitor should provide alerts for is as follows: https://www.courts.nh.gov/rules-superior-court-state-new-hampshire#page-id-4391
However, the comparison is coming from https://www.courts.nh.gov/rules-superior-court-state-new-hampshire#page-id-4491 and all of the text on this page
As you can see, the monitored URL is on a completely different page and there are no Macros established that would suggest moving between pages.
@amyh Thanks for the detailed information — that helps a lot. Based on your description and the screenshots, it looks like you’re monitoring a webpage that behaves like a digital book or table of contents, where different sections are loaded via fragment identifiers (e.g., #page-id-4391, #page-id-4491, etc.).
You’re absolutely right to notice that sometimes the monitor picks up content from the wrong page-id section. This happens because the base URL remains the same (https://www.courts.nh.gov/rules-superior-court-state-new-hampshire), and content for all sections may be present in the DOM or dynamically loaded depending on how the site is built. As a result, Distill might sometimes compare changes across the wrong section if the exact target area isn’t tightly scoped.
To ensure you’re only monitoring the correct section:
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Try refining your selection using XPath or CSS selectors so that it specifically targets the content inside
#page-id-4391. -
You may also try increasing the “Wait for duration” setting (Inside the Settings of the monitor > Configuration) to ensure the page fully loads into the correct state before Distill makes the comparison.