What is meta-webindexer?
meta-webindexer is Meta's web crawler that browses the internet to improve search results for Meta AI users. It analyzes online content to make Meta AI's responses more relevant and accurate, allowing proper citation and linking back to source content. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Meta |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 1, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
meta-webindexer works like Googlebot with a less predictable calendar. Expect recurring crawls across your whole site, at a frequency that tracks how often your content changes and how much authority your site carries. Visits can cluster in bursts when its index refreshes.
meta-webindexer's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/145.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (compatible; meta-webindexer/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)) |
How To Block meta-webindexer With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block meta-webindexer from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI search crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: meta-webindexer # https://knownagents.com/agents/meta-webindexer
Disallow: /Global Insights for meta-webindexer
As of August 1, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
3% of top websites block meta-webindexer in their robots.txt files.
Overall AI Search Crawler Traffic
2.1% of all web traffic came from AI search crawlers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by meta-webindexer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block meta-webindexer?
No, for the same reason you would not block Googlebot. meta-webindexer indexes your site for an AI search engine, and its results link back to you. Blocking it removes you from a whole search channel without helping your traditional rankings. For comparison, 3% of the top websites we track already have robots.txt rules for meta-webindexer.
Does meta-webindexer Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. meta-webindexer is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms meta-webindexer actually follows it.
Does meta-webindexer Access Private Content?
No. meta-webindexer indexes what an anonymous visitor can load, like a traditional search crawler. The bigger risk is content that is public by accident, like a staging site, which it will happily index.
Why Is meta-webindexer Visiting My Website?
meta-webindexer is indexing your site so your pages can appear in its AI search results. It found you through links, your sitemap, or mentions of your domain, and it returns on its own schedule to keep the index fresh.
How Can I Tell if meta-webindexer Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks meta-webindexer visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "meta-webindexer". Look for recurring visits spread across your site, like a search engine crawl. Keep in mind that meta-webindexer doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.