AI crawler · Meta · Search engine
Meta-WebIndexer: what it is, its user agent, and how to block it
Meta-WebIndexer is Meta's search crawler. Crawls the web so Meta AI can cite and link content in its answers. In our 13 October 2026 study, 148 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (6.3%) disallow Meta-WebIndexer. Part of the AI crawler list.
What Meta-WebIndexer does
Operator: Meta. Job: Search engine. Obeys robots.txt.
“Allowing Meta-WebIndexer in your robots.txt file helps us cite and link to your content in Meta AI’s responses.”
Meta-WebIndexer user agent
robots.txt token: Meta-WebIndexer (matched case-insensitively).
meta-webindexer/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers)meta-webindexer/1.1Meta says the string in your logs will be similar to one of these.
robots.txt: allow or block Meta-WebIndexer
Allow
User-agent: Meta-WebIndexer
Allow: /Block
User-agent: Meta-WebIndexer
Disallow: /Affects AI answers and citations. Blocking it removes your pages from Meta's search index, and from the AI answers Meta builds on that index.
Once a group names Meta-WebIndexer, it ignores your User-agent: * rules, so copy any paths you still want blocked into it.
How many top sites block Meta-WebIndexer
Disallow Meta-WebIndexer in robots.txt
6.3%
148 of 2,332 sites
In our 13 October 2026 study, 148 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (6.3%) disallow Meta-WebIndexer.
Sample: Tranco top 5,000, tested once on 13 October 2026 from one Indian fixed-line connection. The robots.txt share counts live sites (home page 2xx) whose rules we could read, as on the AI visibility hub. Method and CSV in the study.
Check your own site
The AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt the way Meta-WebIndexer does and tests what your firewall returns. To write the rules, use the AI robots.txt generator.
Check your page: free, about 20 seconds, no sign-in
What it checks
- robots.txt for Meta-WebIndexer
- Finds the group Meta-WebIndexer obeys under RFC 9309 and the rule that decides your page.
- What your CDN lets through
- Requests the page as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot and compares the answers with a browser request.
- Content without JavaScript
- AI crawlers don't run JavaScript. The audit checks how much of the page is in the raw HTML.
Free to run. Pay only for the fixes you want.
Free
Free account
Your score without signing in; with a free account, every check's result and the full fix for the top 1 issues.
★ Starter
$9 / ₹499 once
Every issue with its exact fix for one site, PDF/Markdown/JSON exports, re-audit for 30 days. Nothing renews.
Pro
$29 / ₹1,499 / month
Full reports on every site, weekly alerts when AI access breaks, competitor compare.
Agencies: white-label widget, branded reports and lead capture on Agency.
Questions
What is Meta-WebIndexer?+
Meta-WebIndexer is Meta's search crawler. Crawls the web so Meta AI can cite and link content in its answers.
What is Meta-WebIndexer's user agent?+
Meta documents it as: meta-webindexer/1.1 (+/documentation/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers). Match on the token Meta-WebIndexer, since version numbers change.
How do I block Meta-WebIndexer?+
Add "User-agent: Meta-WebIndexer" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. Obeys robots.txt, per Meta.
Does blocking Meta-WebIndexer affect AI search citations?+
Blocking it removes your pages from Meta's search index, and from the AI answers Meta builds on that index.
How many websites block Meta-WebIndexer?+
In our 13 October 2026 study, 148 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (6.3%) disallow Meta-WebIndexer.