Meta-ExternalAgent

Meta-ExternalAgent collects pages to train or improve AI models. Most operators use a separate user agent for each job, so you can usually allow or block one without affecting the others.

Model training and content-use controls. Some also govern answer grounding; review the operator's policy before changing access.

This is a full user agent string Meta-ExternalAgent sends. Version numbers change over time; match the Meta-ExternalAgent token rather than the whole string.

To block Meta-ExternalAgent, add this to the robots.txt at the root of your site:

Blocking it asks the operator not to use your pages for model training from then on. It does not remove content already collected, and it does not stop the operator's search crawler or live fetchers, which use their own user agents.

To allow it explicitly, for example after a broader rule blocks other crawlers:

Check what your robots.txt allows for Meta-ExternalAgent and the other AI crawlers in this directory.

Meta does not publish a way to verify Meta-ExternalAgent's requests, so any client can send this user agent. Treat traffic with this name as a claim, not proof.

SurfacedBy's AI traffic tracking recognizes Meta-ExternalAgent in the user agent. Because SurfacedBy cannot confirm these requests come from Meta, they are shown separately as unverified and are not counted as crawls.

Details on this page come from Meta's own documentation: developers.facebook.com/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers.

• Meta-ExternalFetcherLive citation
• meta-webindexerSearch indexing