Meta-ExternalFetcher

Last updated 11 hours ago.

Meta-ExternalFetcher is dispatched by Meta AI products in response to user prompts, when they need to fetch an individual links. Set up agent analytics to see how often Meta-ExternalFetcher visits your website.

Detail

Operator	Meta
Documentation	https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler

Type

AI Assistant

Intelligently performs tasks on behalf of a user

Expected Behavior

AI assistants generally make one-off visits to websites based on user requests, rather than crawling the web in any automatic fashion.

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 the API or WordPress plugin.

Set Up Agent Analytics

Other Websites

4% of top websites are blocking Meta-ExternalFetcher

Learn How →

Robots.txt

Should I Block Meta-ExternalFetcher?

Probably not. AI assistants visit websites directly on behalf of human users, so blocking them will effectively block those users. This could lead to a poor user experience and possible negative sentiment about your website. Not blocking AI assistants will allow more human users to use your website as they choose.

How Do I Block Meta-ExternalFetcher?

You can block Meta-ExternalFetcher or limit its access by setting user agent token rules in your website's robots.txt. Set up agent analytics to check whether it's actually following them.

User Agent Token	Description
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Should match instances of Meta-ExternalFetcher

# robots.txt
# This should block Meta-ExternalFetcher

User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher
Disallow: /

Instead of doing this manually, use the API or WordPress plugin to keep your robots.txt updated with the latest known AI scrapers, crawlers, and assistants automatically.

Set Up Automatic Robots.txt