Every AI bot · Meta

facebookbot

Meta's crawler that collects web pages to train AI models.

In robots.txt: User-agent: facebookbot

Named by2.7%of readable robots.txt files on the top 1M (16,505 of 600,979)

Of those, block it60.2%shut it out of the whole site (9,937 of 16,505)

Same sites, since CC-MAIN-2026-34+0.0 ptsshare of the same 394,690 sites that block it by name: 1.6% → 1.6%

Via Cloudflare's file3.2%of its blocks come from Cloudflare's ready-made robots.txt (317 of 9,937)

60.2%

26.7%

13.1%

Block the whole site: 9,937Block some paths: 4,400Name it but allow it: 2,168

Every robots.txt file on the top 1M that names facebookbot, by what the rules that apply to it say.

Meta's other bots

Sites often treat one company's bots differently, depending on what each is for.

Bot	Purpose	Files naming it	Of those, block it
Meta-ExternalAgent	Collects pages to train AI	54,207	76.5%
Meta-ExternalFetcher	Fetches a page for a chatbot user	7,983	51.6%

Who does what

The highest-ranked sites on the top million in each group. Click one to see its whole robots.txt verdict.

Block it

Block some paths

Name it and allow it

Lists skip sites we don't showcase (adult content).

What this means for you: blocking facebookbot asks Meta not to collect your pages for AI training from now on. robots.txt only affects future visits, and it doesn't touch Meta's other bots. Decide each bot on what it's for, not who runs it.