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MetaLive fetcher

Meta-ExternalFetcher

Meta-ExternalFetcher is a Meta user-requested fetcher for AI and link features across Meta products.

Reads a page when someone asks Meta AI about it.

Get the robots.txt ruleMeta documentation
Is Meta-ExternalFetcher allowed on your site?3 Meta bots

Reads your live robots.txt and applies the same rules these crawlers use. Nothing is stored.

robots.txt token
Meta-ExternalFetcher
Follows robots.txt
Not always
How to verify it
Not published
Last checked
11 June 2026

Should you block Meta-ExternalFetcher?

Usually not. It reads a page only when a person asks Meta AI about it, so blocking it hides your page from someone already looking for it.

What blocking each Meta bot does
Meta botJobIf you block it
Meta-ExternalAgentTrainingBlocking it opts your site out of this direct Meta AI crawling path, but does not cover every Meta user-triggered fetcher.
Meta-WebIndexerSearchAllowing it can help Meta AI cite and link to your content; blocking it can reduce Meta AI search visibility.
Meta-ExternalFetcherThis pageUser fetchA hit usually represents an on-demand fetch for a specific URL rather than broad crawling.
facebookexternalhitOtherBlocking it can break rich link previews and Open Graph extraction in Meta surfaces.
meta-externaladsOtherBlocking it limits Meta’s crawling for those advertising and business uses. Meta documents separate crawlers for link previews, AI, and user-requested fetches.

About robots.txtMeta documents that this fetcher may bypass robots.txt because it performs user-requested fetches.

robots.txt
User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher
Disallow: /

Asks Meta-ExternalFetcher not to crawl any page. Other Meta bots are unaffected. Add it to the robots.txt file at the root of your site, above any wider rules.

Ignored robots.txt?

Meta-ExternalFetcher fires when a real user's question pulls in your page. To know how often Meta AI reaches for your brand at all, track your brand mentions in Meta AI.

Also seen under Meta’s name, but not in its current documentation: FacebookBot. Rules naming them control no documented Meta crawler.

Spot it in your logs.

Match the name, then check where the request came from. Anyone can copy a user-agent. Search your own logs for Meta-ExternalFetcher.

User-agentsource
meta-externalfetcher/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers)

Version numbers change. Match the highlighted name, not the whole string.

  1. 1

    Match the name

    Search your server or CDN log for Meta-ExternalFetcher, case-insensitive. A match is a clue, not proof.

  2. 2

    Check the source

    Meta publishes no IP ranges, reverse DNS or signatures for Meta-ExternalFetcher in the sources here, so it cannot be verified. Treat matches as unconfirmed.

Serve the content in HTML

The cited operator material does not verify JavaScript rendering. Serve useful HTML before client-side JavaScript where possible.

How active is Meta-ExternalFetcher?

Measured across the sites connected to Trakkr, 10 August 2026 to 8 November 2026.

6%

of connected sites saw Meta-ExternalFetcher in the four weeks to 8 November 2026. That is 7 of 110.

100%75%50%25%3%
Meta-ExternalFetcher visited between 1% and 4% of connected sites each week from 10 August 2026 to 8 November 2026.

Share of connected sites it visited each week

Rank by reach
27 of 28
Typical site, per week
36 requests
Sites reached, 13 weeks
11 of 138

Most widespread AI crawlers

Share of connected sites each one visited, last four weeks.

  1. 1OAI-SearchBot83%
  2. 2ClaudeBot80%
  3. 3GPTBot66%
  4. 4Amazonbot63%
  5. 5PerplexityBot57%
  6. 6ChatGPT-User56%
  7. 7Bytespider56%
  8. 27Meta-ExternalFetcher6%
All 28 measured crawlers
How this is measured

Finalized daily crawler summaries from sites connected to Trakkr, grouped by the crawler named in each request. Trakkr’s own site is excluded. A site counts as reached in a week when it logged at least one request from Meta-ExternalFetcher. The typical figure is the median weekly requests among the sites it reached.

  • This is a sample of connected sites, not the whole web.
  • A matching user-agent does not prove the named operator sent the request.
  • Requests are not unique pages, training use or citations.
  • Crawlers seen on fewer than 10 sites are not shown. Classic search crawlers such as Googlebot are not collected on every site, so they are left out.

Questions, answered.

Meta-ExternalFetcher is a Meta user-requested fetcher for AI and link features across Meta products.

Sources.

Officially documented. Operator facts and Trakkr’s measurements keep separate dates.

  1. [1]
    Meta crawler documentation

    Officially documented · checked 11 June 2026

    developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/

First verified 11 June 2026. Last source check 11 June 2026. Activity measured to 8 November 2026.

All AI crawlers

See which AI crawlers read your site.

Trakkr shows which bots, Meta-ExternalFetcher included, visit which pages each day, and whether the answers they feed mention you.

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