Overview
FacebookBot is a search crawler from Meta used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is FacebookBot; related patterns include Facebook Bot; Meta FacebookBot.
FacebookBot is Unverified at the identity-evidence level. The listed identity remains useful for detection, but this record does not currently contain authoritative evidence sufficient to authenticate the identity claim.
FacebookBot is marked as respecting robots.txt directives for crawler access control.
FacebookBot should be reviewed against site policy, source evidence, crawl rate, and requested paths before a permanent allow or block rule is created.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
FacebookBot - Aliases
- Facebook Bot; Meta FacebookBot
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
FacebookBot - Robots Token
- FacebookBot
- Identity Type
- Observed
- Evidence Method
- Treat `FacebookBot` as an identity signal only. Confirm it with current operator documentation, cryptographic verification, forward-confirmed reverse DNS, source-network ownership, or other authoritative evidence before trusting the claimed identity.
Classification
- Type
- Search
- Kind
- Crawler
- Family
- Meta
- Operator
- Meta
- Company
- Meta
- Purpose
- Indexing
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- FacebookBot is used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
- Detection Notes
- FacebookBot traffic is primarily detected by the `FacebookBot` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `Facebook Bot; Meta FacebookBot`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Meta infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- FacebookBot has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: FacebookBot Disallow: /