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Meta

meta-externalads

OtherPublished ASNVerified July 2026

What it is

Meta's advertising crawler. Bucketed as other — advertising fetches are neither AI answers, search indexing, nor training.

In Aiola's taxonomy, Other means fetched for ads or link previews rather than answering, indexing, or training.

User agent

Look for the match token inside the complete HTTP User-Agent header. Tokens can be spoofed, so use the network checks below for authentication.

Full example User-Agent
meta-externalads/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)
Case-insensitive match token
meta-externalads

Official IP ranges

Meta's network is identified here as AS32934. ASN ownership is a useful signal, not a bot-specific allowlist; combine it with the User-Agent and request behavior.

Verify authenticity

Start with the source IP recorded by your trusted edge or server, not an untrusted forwarded header.

Reverse- and forward-DNS double lookup
host REQUEST_IP
# Confirm the hostname ends in an official suffix
host RETURNED_HOSTNAME
# The forward lookup must return REQUEST_IP

For production checks, test against every current prefix in the vendor feed. Re-fetch feeds regularly: a July 2026 snapshot is evidence of publication, not a permanent firewall list.

Control it with robots.txt

Meta documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic.

Allow meta-externalads
User-agent: meta-externalads
Allow: /
Block meta-externalads
User-agent: meta-externalads
Disallow: /

Read Meta's official crawler documentation ↗

Track it

Aiola tracks this crawler on your site — crawls, pages, trends. See when meta-externalads arrives, which URLs it requests, and how activity changes over time.

Explore Aiola Analytics

FAQ

What is meta-externalads?

Meta's advertising crawler. Bucketed as other — advertising fetches are neither AI answers, search indexing, nor training.

What user-agent token identifies meta-externalads?

Match the case-insensitive token “meta-externalads” in the User-Agent header. A matching header alone does not authenticate the sender.

Can I verify meta-externalads by IP address?

Meta traffic can be checked against AS32934, but an ASN is broad. Combine network ownership with the exact user-agent token and your own risk controls.

Can robots.txt block meta-externalads?

Meta documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic. Use the specific “meta-externalads” group when you want a rule for this identity without changing rules for every crawler.

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