---
title: "What is meta-externalads? Meta's Bot Explained | Kitbase"
description: "meta-externalads is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta. How to identify and verify it, and what its traffic means for your site."
canonical: https://kitbase.dev/bot-directory/meta-externalads
---

[Home](/) [Bot Directory](/bot-directory) meta-externalads

# meta-externalads

by Meta

AI answers AI UA + IP range

Fetches a page when a user asks an assistant to answer with fresh web context.

meta-externalads is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

## What it usually means

A person asked an AI assistant a question, and it fetched this URL to answer.

## How to identify it

User-Agent tokens

`meta-externalads`

robots.txt stanza

`User-agent: meta-externalads`

Free tools

[Verify a meta-externalads request](/tools/bot-verifier?ua=meta-externalads) [Check if your site allows meta-externalads](/tools/ai-crawler-access-checker)

## How it's verified

Published IP-range endpoints

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

Currently loaded ranges (sample) Refreshed Sep 4, 2026

`163.77.136.0/23``2a03:2880:f37a::/48``185.60.217.0/24``157.240.14.0/24``2a03:2880:f366::/48``2a03:2880:f085::/48``57.145.6.0/23``57.145.16.0/23``57.141.4.0/24``57.144.186.0/23`

1 IP source configured

[Meta's page for meta-externalads](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/)

## Sources

-   [Meta crawler docs](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/)

## More from Meta

[

meta-externalfetcher

Meta fetcher used when a person requests or shares a specific URL.

](/bot-directory/meta-externalfetcher)[

facebookexternalhit

facebookexternalhit is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

](/bot-directory/facebookexternalhit)[

meta-externalagent

Meta crawler collecting public content to train its AI models and improve Meta products.

](/bot-directory/meta-externalagent)[

meta-webindexer

Meta crawler used to improve Meta AI search result quality.

](/bot-directory/meta-webindexer)[

FacebookBot

FacebookBot is an AI-related crawler operated by Meta.

](/bot-directory/facebookbot)

## Similar bots

[

Amzn-User

Amazon

User-triggered Amazon fetches for fresh answers in products such as Alexa.

](/bot-directory/amzn-user)[

ChatGPT-User

OpenAI

User-triggered fetches when ChatGPT opens a page to answer a person.

](/bot-directory/chatgpt-user)[

Claude-User

Anthropic

User-triggered fetches when Claude opens a page to answer a person.

](/bot-directory/claude-user)[

Copilot

Microsoft

User-triggered Microsoft Copilot fetches for AI answers.

](/bot-directory/copilot)

## See if meta-externalads has visited your site

Kitbase verifies and tracks bot and AI crawler traffic separately from human visitors, so you know exactly who's hitting your site.

[Start Free Trial](https://app.kitbase.dev/signup)