Automated Website Change Monitoring with Bright Data, GPT-4.1 & Google Workspace

Note: This template is for self-hosted n8n instances only

You can use this workflow to fully automate website content monitoring and change detection on a weekly basis—even when there’s no native node for scraping or structured comparison. It uses an AI-powered scraper, structured data extraction, and integrates Google Sheets, Drive, Docs, and email for seamless tracking and reporting.

Main Use Cases

Monitor and report changes to websites (e.g., pricing, content, headings, FAQs) over time Automate web audits, compliance checks, or competitive benchmarking Generate detailed change logs and share them automatically with stakeholders

How it works

The workflow operates as a scheduled process, organized into these stages:

1. Initialization & Configuration

Triggers weekly (or manually) and initializes key variables: Google Drive folder, spreadsheet IDs, notification emails, and test mode.

2. Input Retrieval

Reads the list of URLs to be monitored from a Google Sheet.

3. Web Scraping & Structuring

For each URL, an AI agent uses Bright Data's scrape_as_markdown tool to extract the full web page content. The workflow then parses this content into a well-structured JSON, capturing elements like metadata, headings, pricing, navigation, calls to action, contacts, banners, and FAQs.

4. Saving Current Week’s Results

The structured JSON is saved to Google Drive as the current week’s snapshot for each monitored URL. The Google Sheet is updated with file references for traceability.

5. Comparison with Previous Snapshot

If a prior week’s file exists, it is downloaded and parsed. The workflow compares the current and previous JSON snapshots, detecting and categorizing all substantive content changes (e.g., new/updated plans, FAQ edits, contact info modifications). Optionally, in test mode, mock changes are introduced for demo and validation purposes.

6. Change Report Generation & Delivery

A rich Markdown-formatted changelog is generated, summarizing the detected changes, and then converted to HTML. The changelog is uploaded to Google Docs and linked back to the tracking sheet. An HTML email with the full report and relevant links is sent to recipients.

Summary Flow:

Schedule/workflow trigger → initialize variables Read URL list from spreadsheet For each URL: Scrape & structure as JSON Save to Drive, update tracking sheet If previous week exists: Download & parse previous Compare, generate changelog Convert to HTML, save to Docs, update Sheet Email results

Benefits:

Fully automated website change tracking with end-to-end reporting Adaptable and extensible for any set of monitored pages and content types Easy integration with Google Workspace tools for collaboration and storage Minimal manual intervention required after initial setup