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Tracking ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude · Google AI Overviews
  1. Rankwise
  2. /AI crawlers
  3. /meta-webindexer
Meta · Search index

meta-webindexer

Navigates the web to improve Meta AI search results. Meta says allowing it helps Meta AI cite and link your content in its responses.

Source: developers.facebook.com
Check your robots.txt for AI crawlers

Operator

Meta

Job

Search index

Builds the index an AI answer searches. Block it and you drop out of that product's results.

robots.txt

Follows robots.txt

Meta documents robots.txt as the control for this crawler and says changes can take up to 24 hours.

Source: developers.facebook.com
User agent

How it identifies itself

Copied from the vendor's documentation. Version numbers inside these strings change over time, so match on the token rather than the whole string.
meta-webindexer/1.1
Source: developers.facebook.com
robots.txt

Allow or block meta-webindexer

Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain.

A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it (RFC 9309), so a named group does not inherit the rules under User-agent: *. Repeat any paths you keep private, as the example does with /admin/.

Allow meta-webindexer
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Block meta-webindexer
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Disallow: /
What tryrankwise.com does

We name meta-webindexer and let it in

Read from the robots.txt we serve. We want AI engines to read and cite this site, so every AI crawler is allowed everywhere except the app, the API and the sign-in pages (/dashboard/, /api/, /login, /signup, /sign-in, /sign-up). The file also declares Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes.

tryrankwise.com/robots.txt
User-agent: meta-webindexer
Allow: /
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /signup
Disallow: /sign-in
Disallow: /sign-up

See the whole file. The same rules repeat in every group, because a crawler that matches a named group ignores the wildcard one.

Other Meta crawlers
meta-externalagentModel training
meta-externalfetcherUser-triggered fetch

Sources, checked 2026-09-24

  • developers.facebook.com/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers
Check your own file

See which AI crawlers your robots.txt lets in.

The free AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt and reports which of the major AI crawlers it allows or blocks. No signup.
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