Meta AI: Unblock AI Crawlers from Your Website
How to fix the problem of ai crawlers blocked by robots.txt specifically for Meta AI. Platform-specific solutions and prevention strategies.
Why This Happens in Meta AI
Meta AI uses Meta-ExternalAgent to discover and index content. Blanket 'Disallow: /' rules affecting AI bots. To fix this, you need to ensure Meta AI's crawler can access your content and that your pages are structured in a way Meta AI can understand.
Signs You Have This Problem in Meta AI
No Meta AI-referred traffic despite good traditional SEO
Meta AI systems have no information about your brand
Server logs show no visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.
Meta AI gives very generic responses about your company
How to Fix This in Meta AI
Follow these Meta AI-specific solutions:
Add explicit allow rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot
Review and update robots.txt to allow AI crawlers
Remove overly broad disallow rules
Test robots.txt with Google's testing tool
Monitor server logs to confirm AI crawlers are accessing your site
Consider creating an llms.txt file for AI-specific guidance
Meta AI Technical Details
Crawler Name
Meta-ExternalAgent
User Agent
meta-externalagent
Required robots.txt configuration:
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Allow: /Prevent This Problem in Meta AI
Audit robots.txt (for meta-externalagent) quarterly
Stay updated on new Meta AI crawler user agents
Test Meta AI crawler access after any robots.txt (for meta-externalagent) changes
Balance security needs with Meta AI visibility goals