meta-externalagent
Meta · Training crawler
What it does
meta-externalagent collects page content to be used in model training. Collects content for Meta AI model training.
It does not execute JavaScript. Whatever your server returns in the initial HTML response is the entire page as far as meta-externalagent is concerned — if your content is rendered client-side, this crawler reads an empty container.
Should you block meta-externalagent?
Blocking it keeps your content out of the training corpus. It does not remove you from any answer surface, because this crawler is not what answers are built from.
Your content is not collected for Meta AI model training. Meta's assistant surfaces that rely on live retrieval are governed separately, so this is a training-data decision.
To allow it
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Allow: /To block it
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Disallow: /Put the rule in your robots.txt at the site root. A group that names meta-externalagent explicitly takes precedence over your User-agent: * group, so naming it is how you make your intent survive later edits to the wildcard rules.
Verifying a real meta-externalagent request
Meta publishes IP ranges for its crawling infrastructure. Verify against those; the user agent string alone tells you nothing you should act on.
The mistake people make
Blocking only the older Meta crawler token and assuming coverage. Meta has used more than one name for this function over time, and an outdated robots.txt entry names a bot that no longer visits.
Can meta-externalagent reach your site?
The free scan parses your robots.txt, evaluates every AI crawler against it, and tells you how much of a page meta-externalagent would actually come away with.
Run the free scan