Meta-ExternalAds: Meta's Ads Crawler
What is Meta-ExternalAds?
Meta-ExternalAds crawls pages connected to Meta advertising, to check and rank ad content. Meta-ExternalAds checks pages connected to Meta advertising, so it matters only if you advertise and it never affects organic reach.
Key facts
- Meta-ExternalAds is operated by Meta, and its purpose is ads verification: visits pages submitted as advertisements to check them against policy.
- The user agent for Meta-ExternalAds is documented by Meta and contains the token meta-externalads.
- The robots.txt token for Meta-ExternalAds is meta-externalads, and Meta documents that Meta-ExternalAds respects that rule.
- Meta-ExternalAds never sends a visitor to your site, and Meta-ExternalAds attaches no citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Meta |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Ads verificationVisits pages submitted as advertisements to check them against policy. Only visits submitted pages. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | meta-externalads/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers) |
| robots.txt token | meta-externalads |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | No published method, user agent is the only signal |
| Sends referral traffic | No |
| Attaches a citation | No |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | other |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
203.0.113.42 - - [05/Aug/2026:09:14:07 +0000] "GET /pricing HTTP/1.1" 200 18432 "-" "meta-externalads/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers)"
The part that identifies the request is the token meta-externalads, inside the quoted user-agent field at the end of the line. Everything before it is the ordinary shape of a Common Log Format entry, and the address shown is a documentation address rather than one Meta uses.
What Meta-ExternalAds does not do
Meta-ExternalAds does not send you a visitor, and it attaches no citation, so a read by it can never turn into a click.
Meta-ExternalAds does not affect organic reach, because it only checks pages connected to advertising.
Meta publishes no crawl frequency for Meta-ExternalAds, so any schedule you read elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than a documented figure.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files Meta-ExternalAds under Meta as other, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from Meta-ExternalAds appears on the Crawlers dashboard under its own operator and is left out of the AI Visibility numbers, because it carries no answer a reader could arrive from.
Allow it or block it
Only relevant if you advertise on Meta platforms. Blocking it may affect how your landing pages are assessed. It has no effect on organic reach or on Meta AI training.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You advertise with Meta and want your landing pages checked. | You do not advertise with Meta. Blocking changes nothing about organic reach. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Meta-ExternalAds only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Meta-ExternalAds
User-agent: meta-externalads Allow: /
Block Meta-ExternalAds
User-agent: meta-externalads Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be Meta-ExternalAds is genuine?
Meta publishes no verification method for Meta-ExternalAds, so the user-agent string is the only signal available, and anyone can send one. Treat a claimed Meta-ExternalAds request as unproven.
Does blocking Meta-ExternalAds also block Meta-WebIndexer?
No. Meta-ExternalAds and Meta-WebIndexer are separate tokens, and Meta treats each one on its own. A rule naming Meta-ExternalAds leaves Meta-WebIndexer free to carry on indexing your pages for Meta answers. To stop that as well, name Meta-WebIndexer in a rule of its own.
Will I see Meta-ExternalAds in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and Meta-ExternalAds reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does Meta-ExternalAds send traffic back to my site?
No. Meta-ExternalAds takes content and sends nothing back. A hit appears in your logs as a request with no visitor behind it.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Meta-ExternalAds checks your landing pages on Meta's behalf, and a browser tag never sees that request.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
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