AI agent directory / Meta external ads
Meta external ads
Crawler from Meta
Crawls pages to improve Meta's advertising and other business products.
Meta-ExternalAds is a web crawler run by Meta. Meta says it crawls the web "for use cases such as improving advertising and other business-related products and services."
It is separate from Meta-ExternalAgent, which Meta uses for AI training and indexing. Each crawler has its own robots.txt token, so you can allow one and block the other.
| Run by | Meta |
|---|---|
| Type | Crawler |
| Purpose | Advertising |
| Acts for | Its operator |
| robots.txt token | meta-externalads |
| Documentation | Meta's documentation |
Meta external ads user-agent strings
Full user agent (as documented) (source):
meta-externalads/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers)
Short form (source):
meta-externalads/1.1
Match on meta-externalads; the rest of the string changes between versions.
How Airglow identifies it
- DeclaredIt names itself in the User-Agent:
meta-externalads.
Every visit in Airglow says which of these applied, so you can decide how much to trust it.
Seeing it on your site
It usually reads pages without running JavaScript, so Airglow counts every visit through a server connection (Cloudflare). When it does run JavaScript, the script sees and replays it too.
Allowing or blocking Meta external ads
Meta external ads reads the meta-externalads group in your robots.txt. To keep it out of the whole site:
User-agent: meta-externalads Disallow: /
Meta runs a separate bot for each purpose, so blocking Meta external ads doesn't block its other agents listed below.
Airglow shows, for every agent that visits, whether your robots.txt lets it in, and helps you write rules by purpose (training, search, acting for a person).
Does Meta-ExternalAds follow robots.txt?
Yes. Meta's crawler documentation gives a robots.txt example with User-agent: meta-externalads, and does not list it among the crawlers that may bypass robots.txt. Those exceptions are Meta-ExternalFetcher, for fetches a user asked for, and FacebookExternalHit, for security or integrity checks.
Meta says its crawlers may cache robots.txt for up to 24 hours, so a change can take a day to apply.
Meta-ExternalAds vs Meta-ExternalAgent
- Meta-ExternalAds (
meta-externalads): advertising and other business-related products and services. - Meta-ExternalAgent (
meta-externalagent): training foundation AI models and improving products by indexing content directly.
Blocking one token does not block the other. List each one in robots.txt if you want to block both.
Questions
What is meta-externalads?
It is the user agent of Meta-ExternalAds, a Meta crawler that collects web content to improve advertising and other business-related products and services.
Is Meta-ExternalAds used for AI training?
Meta does not say so. It describes AI model training under Meta-ExternalAgent, a different crawler with its own token.
How do I block Meta-ExternalAds?
Add a User-agent: meta-externalads group with Disallow: / to robots.txt. Meta says changes can take up to 24 hours to apply.
Does Meta publish IP addresses for Meta-ExternalAds?
Not on its crawler documentation page. That page gives no IP list, ASN or other way to verify this crawler.
Why does the documented user agent have a relative link?
Meta's page lists it as meta-externalads/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers). Matching on meta-externalads covers both documented forms.
Other agents from Meta
Sources
Last reviewed November 10, 2026.
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