meta-externalads

User agent

meta-externalads

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

IP verification

Verified when the user agent and the IP range both match

1. 1User agent

   The request's user agent contains meta-externalads.

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: meta-externalads
Disallow: /private/

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

Questions

What is meta-externalads?

Crawls for advertising and other Meta business products. 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 meta-externalads?

Check both the user agent and the IP. Requests from meta-externalads contain "meta-externalads" 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 meta-externalads?

Add a robots.txt group for "meta-externalads" 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 meta-externalads 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.