SOCIAL PREVIEWS · META
facebookexternalhit
Fetchers that build the preview card when someone shares your page in a social or chat app.
- Fetches when a person asks
- Can be verified
- Docs checked 28 Oct 2026
- VerifiableIdentityCloudflare
- User-ledrobots.txtFetches when a person asks
- PurposeSocial previewNot an AI product
- TokenfacebookexternalhitUse it in a User-agent line
robots.txt
It fetches a page because a person asked. The operator says robots.txt may not apply, so block it at the server or CDN if you need to.
Block facebookexternalhit
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Disallow: /Allow facebookexternalhit
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Allow: /Quick facts
- robots.txt token
facebookexternalhit- User agent contains
- facebookexternalhit, facebookcatalog
- Operator
- Meta
- Category
- Social previews
- Purpose
- Social preview
- robots.txt
- User-triggered
- Verification
- Can be verified
- Documentation
- developers.facebook.com · checked 28 Oct 2026
If you block it
Links to your pages lose their preview card when shared on that platform.
Check a visit is real
- Listed by Cloudflare as a verified bot
Where this comes from
The same registry NdovuSEOLabs uses to classify crawler traffic in your server and CDN logs, built from the operator’s own documentation.
Registry version 2026-10-29.1
More from Meta
See which of these crawlers visit your site.
Crawl Analytics reads your own server and CDN logs and checks each claim against the operator’s published IP ranges and DNS.