PHP - How to see if a word is on a specific webpage?

Question

I need to check if a webpage outside of my site has a specific word on it. I’ve tried file_get_contents() but it doesn’t return anything. Is there any way I can do this in PHP?

edit: Here’s what I’ve tried:

$query = 'example';
$file = "https:// www.site.com/search?q=$query";
// tested url and it works, had to add space to post it
$contents = file_get_contents($file);
echo $contents;

I was expecting it to just output the entire page for me to use .includes() on later but it just doesn’t output anything.

Answer 1

Look into curl to get the contents of a web page. Then you can use preg_match to find the word.