meta-webindexer
meta-webindexer is a bot operated by Meta that indexes pages so an AI answer engine can cite them. As per their documentation, "The Meta-WebIndexer crawler navigates the web to improve Meta AI search result quality for users. Whether it honours robots.txt is undocumented, and a request claiming to be meta-webindexer can be checked against the operator's announced ASN.
meta-webindexer at a glance
| User agent | meta-webindexerToken only. The operator has not published a full user-agent string, so match on the substring rather than an exact header. |
|---|---|
| Operator | Meta |
| Purpose | AI search crawlers |
| Respects robots.txt | Not documented |
| Verification method | Operator ASN check Check the source IP against AS32934. Meta publishes no per-bot range file. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/ |
| Crawl pattern | Unhinged, more than 1 per second. |
| Robots.txt tokens | meta-webindexer |
| Operator documentation | https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/ |
As per their documentation, "The Meta-WebIndexer crawler navigates the web to improve Meta AI search result quality for users. In doing so, Meta analyzes online content to enhance the relevance and accuracy of Meta AI. Allowing Meta-WebIndexer in your robots.txt file helps us cite and link to your content in Meta AI's responses."
Allow or block meta-webindexer
Paste one of these into the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. Rules are per token, so a block on one crawler leaves every other bot untouched.
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Disallow: /Blocks every path for this crawler only.
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Allow: /Explicit allow. Useful when a wildcard rule above it would otherwise catch this crawler.
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Allow: /
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /searchEdit the Disallow paths to match your own account, checkout and search URLs.
What blocking actually costs you
Blocking meta-webindexer takes the site out of the index behind its answers, so it stops being cited there. If referral traffic from AI answers matters to you, block the training crawler instead and leave this one alone.
Block every crawler in the directory at onceIs that really meta-webindexer?
A user-agent header is a string the client chooses. Scrapers copy meta-webindexer precisely because site owners allow it. Check the source IP against AS32934. Meta publishes no per-bot range file.
Paste the IP address from your access log below. You will see whether it belongs to a hosting provider, a residential proxy pool or a Tor exit, plus the ASN that announces it, which is what tells you whether the claim holds up.
Other crawlers run by Meta
Related crawlers
Identify crawlers automatically instead of by hand
Agentscan checks a request against published crawler ranges, reverse DNS and hosting data, then returns a verdict your edge can act on. One call per request, no range files to keep up to date.