You need to check the HTTP response code:
function get_http_response_code($url) {
$headers = get_headers($url);
return substr($headers[0], 9, 3);
}
if(get_http_response_code('http://somenotrealurl.com/notrealpage') != "200"){
echo "error";
}else{
file_get_contents('http://somenotrealurl.com/notrealpage');
}