Techniques for using web probes for monitoring user experience including use of caching to prevent a surge of web probes on destination servers and for detecting web probe traffic through a proxy including where the traffic is encrypted. A method implemented by a proxy includes receiving a response to a first web probe to a destination server; caching data associated with the response to the first web probe in a cache; receiving a request for a second web probe to the destination server; and serving a response to the second web probe utilizing the data in the cache in lieu of forwarding the second web probe to the destination server.