Meta-ExternalAgent
Meta documents Meta-ExternalAgent as a crawler associated with model-related fetching. User-Agent identity is self-reported.
- Operator
- Meta
- Motif family
- meta
- Motif class
- Model-related crawler
- In Motif classifier
- Yes
- robots.txt
- Check Meta's current crawler documentation
- Executes JavaScript
- No
- Verified in Motif
- No public IP list Motif relies on
What Motif will and will not claim
Motif classifies Meta-ExternalAgent as family meta, class model, on tracker or collector hits. Motif does not claim the hit is vendor-verified.
Revenue
Not a visitor. Not a channel. Cannot win.
Vendor documentation
Start with the vendor page at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers. Motif stores the controlled token from a self-reported User-Agent.
Meta-ExternalAgent User-Agent example
meta-externalagent
Allow Meta-ExternalAgent in robots.txt
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Allow: /
Block Meta-ExternalAgent in robots.txt
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Disallow: /
Does Meta-ExternalAgent count as a visit in Motif?
No. If Meta-ExternalAgent hits the Motif tracker or collector it increments AI crawlers. It does not create a visitor and cannot win a recommendation.
Will Motif show Meta-ExternalAgent on my HTML pages?
Only if that client requested /m.js or POST /v1/events. HTML-only crawls of the origin never reach Motif. Saying otherwise would be a product lie.
Should I block Meta-ExternalAgent?
Model-related crawlers are a data-policy call. Allowing or blocking them does not create Stripe customers. Motif will not pretend a crawler hit is demand.
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