meta-externalagent
Meta uses this crawler to collect content for AI model training. Crawls web content to train Meta's AI models.
What is meta-externalagent?
Crawls web content to train Meta's AI models. Training-data crawlers collect publicly available pages to build future AI models. Allowing one means your content can shape how models write and reason about your topics, and your site may be quoted from model memory. Blocking one keeps future training runs away, though anything already collected typically stays collected.
If you want AI engines to know your brand and quote your pages from memory, this is the crawler that gets you there.
Does meta-externalagent respect robots.txt?
Yes. meta-externalagent honors robots.txt directives, including wildcard rules and Allow lines. A Disallow rule for this crawler is respected — but remember robots.txt is a voluntary protocol across the whole industry, not a wall.
How to block meta-externalagent
Add this group to your robots.txt to deny meta-externalagent across your whole site:
User-agent: meta-externalagent Disallow: /
If you monetize content behind a paywall or care about control, allowing broad training crawlers means giving that material away with no attribution loop.
How to allow meta-externalagent
meta-externalagent is allowed by default on every site. It only gets blocked if a matching rule exists — most often a global User-agent: * group with Disallow: /. To exempt it while blocking other bots, put an empty Disallow group for it before the global block:
User-agent: meta-externalagent Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /
Is meta-externalagent currently allowed on your site?
Paste your robots.txt into the free auditor and see verdicts for all 61 AI crawlers — including the specific paths that matter.