Training · Meta
Meta-ExternalAgent
Meta's crawler for training AI models and improving its products. Distinct from facebookexternalhit, which only renders link previews. The older FacebookBot token served a similar role.
- Operator
- Meta
- Purpose
- Training crawlers
- Feeds
- Meta AI
- robots.txt token
Meta-ExternalAgentAlso:FacebookBot- Honours robots.txt
- Honours robots.txt
- Documentation
- developers.facebook.com
What it looks like in server logs
A representative user-agent string. Version numbers change; the Meta-ExternalAgent token does not. Paste your own log line into the user-agent checker to confirm a match.
meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)How to block Meta-ExternalAgent
Add this to the robots.txt at the root of your domain. Robots.txt is advisory: it works only on crawlers that choose to read it. This one is honours robots.txt according to its operator.
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
User-agent: FacebookBot
Disallow: /
To block every training crawler at once, or to block training while keeping AI search citations, use the robots.txt generator.
How to allow Meta-ExternalAgent while blocking others
A more specific User-agent group wins over a wildcard. Place this above any User-agent: * block that disallows paths, and Meta-ExternalAgent keeps full access.
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Allow: /
How to verify a genuine hit
The user-agent string is self-asserted: anyone can send it from a laptop, and scrapers routinely impersonate well-known crawlers to slip past filters aimed at unknown ones.
Meta publishes its crawler IP ranges via its AS32934 route announcements.