What Is FacebookBot?

FacebookBot is a web crawler used by Meta to download training data for its AI speech recognition technology. You can see how often FacebookBot visits your website by setting up Dark Visitors Agent Analytics.

Agent Type

Expected Behavior

AI data scrapers systematically crawl websites to collect training data for machine learning models. Unlike search engine crawlers that index for retrieval, these scrapers download content specifically for model training. Their crawling patterns are typically opaque. Operators rarely disclose site selection, frequency, or priorities. Scrapers may crawl more aggressively than traditional search engines, and the collected data becomes part of training datasets with limited transparency about attribution or usage.

Detail

User Agent String

Access other known user agent strings and recent IP addresses using the API.

Robots.txt

In this example, all pages are blocked. You can customize which pages are off-limits by swapping out / for a different disallowed path.

User-agent: FacebookBot # https://darkvisitors.com/agents/facebookbot
Disallow: /

Frequently Asked Questions About FacebookBot

Should I Block FacebookBot?

Consider your priorities. FacebookBot collects content for training machine learning models. While this content is publicly accessible, you may want to block it if you're concerned about attribution, compensation, or how your creative work might be used in AI systems or generated outputs.

How Do I Block FacebookBot?

If you want to, you can block or limit FacebookBot's access by configuring user agent token rules in your robots.txt file. The best way to do this is using Automatic Robots.txt, which blocks all agents of this type and updates continuously as new agents are released. While the vast majority of agents operated by reputable companies honor these robots.txt directives, bad actors may choose to ignore them entirely. In that case, you'll need to implement alternative blocking methods such as firewall rules or server-level restrictions. You can verify whether FacebookBot is respecting your rules by setting up Agent Analytics to monitor its visits to your website.

Will Blocking FacebookBot Hurt My SEO?

Blocking AI data scrapers has minimal direct SEO impact since these tools don't contribute to search engine indexing. However, if your content is used to train models that power AI search engines, blocking scrapers might reduce your representation in AI-generated responses, potentially affecting future discoverability.

Does FacebookBot Access Private Content?

AI data scrapers typically focus on publicly available content for training data collection. However, some may attempt to access password-protected areas, API endpoints, or content behind paywalls. The scope varies widely depending on the operator's goals and technical sophistication. Most respect authentication barriers, but some may use techniques to bypass access controls.

How Can I Tell if FacebookBot Is Visiting My Website?

Setting up Agent Analytics will give you realtime visibility into FacebookBot visiting your website, along with hundreds of other AI agents, crawlers, and scrapers. This will also let you measure human traffic to your website coming from AI search and chat LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Why Is FacebookBot Visiting My Website?

FacebookBot likely found your site through systematic web discovery methods like following links from other indexed sites, processing sitemaps, or using seed URLs from publicly available website lists. Your site may have been selected because it contains the type of content useful for training AI models.

How Can I Authenticate Visits From FacebookBot?

Agent Analytics authenticates agent visits from many agents, letting you know whether each one was actually from that agent, or spoofed by a bad actor. This helps you identify suspicious traffic patterns and make informed decisions about blocking or allowing specific user agents.

References

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/bot/