Meta · Other AI bots
FacebookBot
Meta crawler traffic associated with Facebook bot fetches. Allow it unless you are deliberately dropping Facebook product crawls.
- Operator
- Meta
- Traffic type
- Other AI bots
- Verification
- Not independently verifiable
- robots.txt
- Usually honors robots.txt
Usually means: Link-preview, ads, and product fetchers. Allow them if you want unfurls and landing-page fetches to work; they are not the citation path.
User-agent
robots.txt and most WAF rules match the token, not the full Mozilla string. Operators often wrap FacebookBot in extra product or version text.
FacebookBot
What FacebookBot does
FacebookBot appears on some Facebook-initiated fetches. Do not confuse it with facebookexternalhit or meta-externalagent.
How to get discovered
Allow FacebookBot on public pages. Use the more specific Meta tokens for AI search vs previews vs training.
Why FacebookBot might skip you
A Facebook* Disallow aimed at scrapers that also dropped official Meta crawlers.
robots.txt rule
Allow this token on public pages you want retrieved or cited. A CDN “Block AI bots” toggle can still 403 it after robots.txt says Allow.
# Keep FacebookBot eligible to fetch this site
User-agent: FacebookBot
Allow: /Meta has not published a machine-readable range file for this token. Do not treat the user-agent alone as proof of identity.
JavaScript: render behavior is not documented.
Other Meta bots
Training, search, and user-fetch tokens from the same operator are not interchangeable. Allow the discovery path even when you opt out of training.
FacebookBot FAQ
What is FacebookBot?
FacebookBot appears on some Facebook-initiated fetches. Do not confuse it with facebookexternalhit or meta-externalagent.
Should I allow FacebookBot in robots.txt?
Yes if you want Meta to be able to fetch and cite this site. Blocking FacebookBot is how pages stay invisible to that product even when Googlebot still crawls them.
How do I know a request is really FacebookBot?
Meta has not published a range file for this token. Treat the user-agent as a claimed identity, and do not build a hard IP allowlist from blog posts or screenshots.
Letting FacebookBot in is the start. Getting cited is the job.
Rankealo checks whether AI crawlers can reach you, then publishes pages built to be retrieved and quoted in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
