Meta · Other AI bots
facebookexternalhit
Meta’s link-preview crawler for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Blocking it breaks unfurls, not ChatGPT citations.
- 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 facebookexternalhit in extra product or version text.
facebookexternalhit
What facebookexternalhit does
facebookexternalhit fetches a URL to build the share card (title, image, description). It is the unfurl bot, not Meta AI search.
How to get discovered
Allow facebookexternalhit and keep Open Graph tags on public URLs. This is how shared links look right; it is not how you get cited in Llama answers.
Why facebookexternalhit might skip you
WAF challenges, missing OG tags that make the fetch look empty, or Disallow on the token.
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 facebookexternalhit eligible to fetch this site
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Allow: /Meta has not published a machine-readable range file for this token. Do not treat the user-agent alone as proof of identity.
Sources
JavaScript: reads raw HTML only.
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.
facebookexternalhit FAQ
What is facebookexternalhit?
facebookexternalhit fetches a URL to build the share card (title, image, description). It is the unfurl bot, not Meta AI search.
Should I allow facebookexternalhit in robots.txt?
Yes if you want Meta to be able to fetch and cite this site. Blocking facebookexternalhit is how pages stay invisible to that product even when Googlebot still crawls them.
How do I know a request is really facebookexternalhit?
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 facebookexternalhit 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.
