facebookexternalhit
What is facebookexternalhit?
About
facebookexternalhit is a fetcher operated by Meta. It's not currently known to be artificially intelligent or AI-related. If you think that's incorrect or can provide more detail about its purpose, please contact us. Set up Dark Visitors agent analytics to see how often facebookexternalhit visits your website.
Detail
| Operator | Meta |
Type
Expected Behavior
Fetchers visit websites on-demand. They're normally dispatched by apps to present metadata about a link (e.g. the title and thumbnail image) to a user.
Analytics
Visits to Your Website
Half of your traffic probably comes from artificial agents, and there are more of them every day. Track their activity with agent analytics.
Other Websites
Robots.txt
Should I Block facebookexternalhit?
Probably not. If you block a fetcher, it won't be able to fetch the metadata it needs to display a link preview. Fewer people will click on the link to your website without this.
How Do I Block facebookexternalhit?
You can block facebookexternalhit or limit its access by setting user agent token rules in your website's robots.txt. Set up Dark Visitors agent analytics to check whether it's actually following them.
| User Agent Token | Description |
|---|---|
facebookexternalhit |
Should match instances of facebookexternalhit |
# robots.txt
# This should block facebookexternalhit
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Disallow: /
Recommended Solution
Instead of doing this manually, use automatic robots.txt to keep your rules updated with the latest AI scrapers, crawlers, and assistants automatically.