FaceBook Bots, Crawlers And User Agents Causing Resource Drains On Websites And Hosting Accounts

In recent weeks, webmasters have raised urgent concerns regarding Facebook's aggressive crawling practices, particularly highlighting the behavior of its user agent, “facebookexternalhit.” Many site owners report that these bots are creating significant strain on their web hosting servers, leading to alarming spikes in traffic that threaten site reliability.

Several site owners have come forward with their experiences, describing the overwhelming impact of Facebook’s crawling activities on their websites.

One webmaster recounted their situation, said, “Our website gets hammered every 45 to 60 minutes with spikes of approximately 400 requests per second from 20 to 30 different IP addresses within Facebook’s netblocks. Between these spikes, the traffic is manageable, but the sudden load is risky.”

This sentiment resonates with many, as webmasters are advocating for a more balanced distribution of requests from Facebook’s bots, akin to the behavior exhibited by Googlebot and other reputable search engine crawlers.

The consequences of these excessive requests extend beyond mere inconvenience; they disrupt the user experience and lead to costly resource consumption for site owners.

Smaller websites, in particular, have found themselves severely impacted. In response to the relentless onslaught, some webmasters have taken proactive measures by implementing stricter rules in their robots.txt files to shield their servers from the overwhelming traffic.

However, because Facebook’s bot functions as a scraper rather than a traditional crawler, it disregards these instructions, further complicating the situation.

This growing issue has sparked widespread discussions within the web development community, with experts urging Facebook to reconsider its crawling strategies. The collective voice of these webmasters underscores a critical need for a more sustainable approach to web scraping and crawling practices.

In a bid to manage the excessive requests, many webmasters are turning to tools like Cloudflare, which provides robust features for managing traffic and implementing rate limiting. By configuring a rate-limiting WAF rule, webmasters can effectively throttle the number of requests originating from Facebook’s bots, alleviating server strain during peak traffic periods.

One webmaster expressed their perspective on the necessity of a balanced approach, stating, “I don’t want to block the bot entirely, but the current pattern is unsustainable. Using Cloudflare’s rate limiting has allowed us to protect our site while still enabling Facebook to access our content for link previews.”

Concerns regarding Facebook’s crawling practices have been echoed on various platforms. In a post on Cloudflare, one user articulated their frustrations: “I am writing to express my concern about the excessive crawling activity of Facebook’s crawler.

“This excessive crawling is causing significant performance issues and potential downtime for our website.” They went on to detail, “Our web server logs indicate that Facebook’s crawler (facebookexternalhit/1.1 – 2a03:2880:22ff:7::face is making multiple requests to our WordPress website every second, even during off-peak hours,”

“During peak hours, the crawler’s activity spikes to tens of thousands of requests per minute. This excessive crawling is overwhelming our servers and causing them to slow down or even crash.”

While webmasters recognize the necessity of Facebook’s crawler for indexing purposes and making their content accessible to users, they firmly believe that the current level of crawling is excessive and unreasonable. As a result, many remain vigilant, closely monitoring their server performance and adjusting settings to mitigate the challenges posed by Facebook’s bots.

The unfolding situation highlights a critical juncture for the web development community, with potential implications for how major tech companies manage web scraping and crawling practices in the future.

As webmasters advocate for a more equitable solution, the outcome of this discussion could set important precedents in the industry, influencing the relationship between webmasters and tech giants moving forward.