FacebookBot

User agent

FacebookBot

MetricRaven matches this token anywhere in the request's user agent, ignoring case. Operators add version numbers and browser text around it, for example "FacebookBot/1.0".

IP verification

Verified when the user agent and the IP range both match

1. 1User agent

   The request's user agent contains FacebookBot.

2. 2Request IP

   Your server-side tracker sends the IP that made the request.

3. 3Range check

   The IP is compared with the ranges Meta publishes, refreshed twice a day.

Range sources

• Meta network (AS32934)

  https://stat.ripe.net/data/announced-prefixes/data.json?resource=AS32934

  Meta doesn't publish crawler-specific ranges; this is the network it announces, so a match means the request came from Meta's infrastructure.

Control it in robots.txt

User-agent: FacebookBot
Disallow: /private/

Well-behaved crawlers re-read robots.txt within a day or so.

Questions

What is FacebookBot?

An older Meta crawler user agent, still seen in some logs. MetricRaven groups it under Other bots: ad checks, link previews, feed readers, SEO tools and other bots.

How do I verify that a request really comes from FacebookBot?

Check both the user agent and the IP. Requests from FacebookBot contain "FacebookBot" in the user agent and come from the IP ranges Meta publishes (https://stat.ripe.net/data/announced-prefixes/data.json?resource=AS32934). A request with the name but another IP is likely spoofed.

How do I block or allow FacebookBot?

Add a robots.txt group for "FacebookBot" with the paths to allow or disallow. Fetchers that act for a user may ignore robots.txt; block those at your server or firewall instead.

How can I see when FacebookBot visits my website?

Most crawlers never run JavaScript, so browser analytics miss them. MetricRaven's @metricraven/ai-crawl package reports crawler requests from your server, verifies their IPs against published ranges, and shows which pages each crawler reads.