What meta-externalads does
meta-externalads is a Meta web crawler that crawls the web for use cases such as improving advertising and other business-related products and services. It identifies itself with a user-agent string containing "meta-externalads/1.1". Meta's crawler documentation says site owners can configure robots.txt so its crawlers interact properly with a site, and recommends allowlisting by IP address rather than user-agent string as the more secure verification method.
How to control meta-externalads
Target meta-externalads in your robots.txt with the meta-externalads token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow meta-externalads
User-agent: meta-externalads
Allow: /Block meta-externalads
User-agent: meta-externalads
Disallow: /Meta's documentation says to allow up to 24 hours for robots.txt changes to take effect because its crawlers may cache robots.txt contents for up to 24 hours, and it recommends IP-based allowlisting as more secure than matching user-agent strings.
How to identify meta-externalads
Temso identifies meta-externaladstraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
meta-externalads(?![a-z])meta-externalads FAQ
What is meta-externalads?
meta-externalads is a Meta crawler that crawls the web for use cases such as improving advertising and other business-related products and services. It appears in logs with a user-agent string containing "meta-externalads/1.1".
How do I block meta-externalads?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: meta-externalads" and a Disallow rule for the content you want excluded. Meta's documentation notes that changes can take up to 24 hours to apply because its crawlers may cache robots.txt for up to 24 hours.
About Advertising Bots
Bots run by ad platforms to check landing pages, verify ad placements, and analyze content for brand safety and targeting.
If you run ads on a platform, its ad bots usually need access; blocking them can break ad approval and quality checks for your own campaigns.
