AI crawlers · Meta
Is your site blocking meta-externalagent?
meta-externalagent is Meta's crawler for model training. Check your site now: we read your robots.txt exactly as meta-externalagent must, ask your server as each AI crawler, and look at your product pages.
Does blocking it hurt?
Model training Blocking meta-externalagent only opts your content out of Meta's model training. It doesn't stop AI search and answer assistants from reading your shop. Whether to allow training is your choice, not a fault.
In our research, 3% of 2,159 online shops block meta-externalagent in robots.txt. See the research.
Allow or block it in robots.txt
Meta says meta-externalagent follows robots.txt, so the lines below decide whether it reads your shop.
To let it in (add to your robots.txt, at yourshop.com/robots.txt):
User-agent: meta-externalagent Allow: /
To keep it out:
User-agent: meta-externalagent Disallow: /
A more specific group wins: if your robots.txt also has a group for meta-externalagent, that group decides, not the “User-agent: *” rules. Our check reads it the same way (RFC 9309).
Other places it gets blocked
- Cloudflare. Cloudflare has blocked AI crawlers by default on new sites since July 2025, and it can also write your robots.txt for you. If your site uses Cloudflare, check its AI crawler settings first (MIT Technology Review).
- Security plugins and firewalls. WordPress security plugins and host firewalls sometimes refuse crawlers they don’t recognise, even when robots.txt allows them. Our check asks your server as each crawler and shows any refusal.
Where this comes from
Meta’s own documentation: developers.facebook.com. Not yet confirmed from Meta's own page in this round of research. Seed entry: verify first.
We check 18 AI crawlers in one go. See them all · How the check works