facebookexternalhit

Last updated a day ago.

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.

Track facebookexternalhit Visiting Your Website
You can see when facebookexternalhit visits your website using the API or WordPress plugin.
Set Up Agent Analytics

Detail

Operator Meta

Type

Fetcher
Fetches web content on behalf of an app

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.

Insights

facebookexternalhit's Activity on 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

6%
of top websites are currently blocking facebookexternalhit in some way
Learn How →

Access Control

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.

Using Robots.txt

User Agent Token Description
facebookexternalhit Should match instances of facebookexternalhit

You can block facebookexternalhit or limit its access by setting user agent token rules in your website's robots.txt.

# robots.txt
# This should block facebookexternalhit

User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Disallow: /

Instead of doing this manually, you can 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