To get your brand mentioned in Meta AI, work on the two things it reads: the open web, through search, and the Meta apps it lives in. Meta AI answers inside WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, on meta.ai, in its own app and on Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and it can search the web to give recommendations. So the work is to let Meta’s search crawler in, rank in the web search its answers draw on, make your brand’s facts the same on your site and on your Meta profiles, write passages that can be quoted whole, get named on the pages that search returns, and test from the countries where Meta AI is actually live for your buyers.
One thing first: Cituna does not track Meta AI. It tracks seven other engines, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, and how to measure Meta AI without it is covered in step 7.
What makes Meta AI different from the other engines
Most answer engines are a destination: someone opens ChatGPT or Perplexity to ask a question. Meta AI sits inside apps people already have open for something else. The search bar in Instagram or Messenger and a chat in WhatsApp all lead to the same assistant. That changes three things for a brand.
- The question arrives mid-conversation. Meta’s own example is a group chat planning a ski trip that asks Meta AI for flights without leaving Messenger. The prompts are short and casual, and often local.
- Availability depends on the country. Meta AI launched in the US in September 2023, reached 13 more countries in April 2024, and only began rolling out across 41 European countries, the EU included, in March 2025. A brand that sells mainly in Europe has had far less time in front of it.
- Meta runs its own crawler for AI search. Meta documents a crawler whose stated job is to improve Meta AI’s search results, separate from the one it uses for training AI models. Blocking one has a different effect from blocking the other.
How Meta AI finds what it says about brands
Meta has said less about its retrieval than OpenAI, Google or Microsoft have. What its own pages say, as read on October 9, 2026:
- Its September 2023 launch post says that in text-based chats Meta AI has access to real-time information through Meta’s search partnership with Bing.
- Its April 2024 and March 2025 posts say Meta AI can reach information from across the web, without naming a provider. Its April 2025 post on the Meta AI app says it can search across the web to give recommendations.
- Its crawler documentation lists Meta-WebIndexer, which it says crawls the web to improve Meta AI’s search results, and says that allowing it helps Meta cite and link your content in Meta AI’s responses.
Meta has not published a current list of search partners. So the practical reading keeps to what Meta has named: Bing, in its 2023 launch post, and its own crawler, Meta-WebIndexer, in its crawler documentation. Doing well in Bing and letting Meta-WebIndexer in covers both.
How we chose these seven steps
The steps follow the path a brand mention takes in Meta AI: the crawler reaches the page, the search ranks it, the answer reads it, and someone checks the result. Every statement about how Meta AI works comes from Meta’s own pages, its crawler documentation and four Meta newsroom posts from September 2023 to April 2025, all read on October 9, 2026 and linked where they are used. Where Meta has not said something, such as its current search partners or whether a brand’s Facebook Page shapes recommendations, we say so instead of guessing. The order is the order to do the work in, not a ranking of importance.
Step 1: Let Meta’s AI search crawler in
Meta lists five crawlers on its web crawler documentation, and each does a different job:
| User agent | What Meta says it does | Follows robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| meta-webindexer | Crawls the web to improve Meta AI’s search results; Meta says allowing it helps Meta AI cite and link your content | Yes |
| meta-externalagent | Crawls for uses such as training foundation AI models or improving products by indexing content directly | Yes |
| meta-externalfetcher | Fetches individual links at a user’s request, including helping AI complete tasks on websites | May bypass it, because the user asked for the fetch |
| meta-externalads | Crawls for uses such as improving advertising and other business products and services | Yes |
| facebookexternalhit | Crawls an app or website shared in Meta’s apps, such as Facebook, Instagram or Messenger, to show its title, description and thumbnail | May bypass it for security or integrity checks |
Source: Meta’s web crawler documentation, read October 9, 2026. Meta says a robots.txt change can take up to 24 hours to take effect, because its crawlers may cache the file for that long.
For mentions in Meta AI’s answers, meta-webindexer is the one that matters. A site can disallow meta-externalagent to keep its pages out of training and still allow meta-webindexer, because they are separate tokens in robots.txt. Check that a broad rule, such as a disallow for every agent or a firewall rule written for “meta” bots, has not caught the indexer too. Our guide to allowing AI crawlers in robots.txt safely covers the syntax, and the one on which AI bots crawl your site shows how to confirm the visits in your server logs.
Step 2: Rank in the search Meta AI draws on
Because Bing is the one search partner Meta has named, Bing is the safest place to start. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit a sitemap, and push changes with IndexNow so a corrected price or a new product page reaches Bing quickly. Our Copilot guide walks through that setup; the same work serves both assistants.
Then think about the query, not the prompt. A casual question in WhatsApp (“good running shoes for flat feet under 100”) is the kind that needs a web search before it can be answered. Find the few-word phrase your buyer’s question boils down to, and check who ranks for it. If your page is not on the first page of results for that phrase, it is unlikely to be one of the sources Meta AI reads.
Step 3: Make your facts match on your site and your Meta profiles
Meta AI runs inside the apps where your Facebook Page, Instagram profile and WhatsApp Business profile already sit. Meta has not said whether, or how, a brand’s own Page feeds Meta AI’s recommendations, so treat this as consistency work, not a shortcut. What Meta has said, in its April 2025 post, is that Meta AI personalises answers with information a person has chosen to share on Meta products, such as their profile and the content they like or engage with, and that personalised responses are available in the US and Canada.
Use the same company name, category, address, hours, prices and one-line description on your website, Facebook Page, Instagram bio and WhatsApp Business profile. Contradictions give any engine a reason to hedge or to name someone else. Our guide to building an entity profile for AI search lists the fields to align.
Step 4: Write passages that can be lifted whole
Meta AI answers on a phone screen, inside a chat, so its replies are short. A passage that states the answer in its first sentence, with the brand, the product and the number together, is easier to reuse than one that builds up to it. For each buyer question you want to be mentioned for:
- answer it in the first two sentences of the section that covers it;
- put prices, sizes, locations and hours in plain HTML text, not only in images or scripts;
- keep one page as the owner of each question, so the search does not have to choose between two of yours.
Step 5: Get named on the pages the search returns
For “best” and “which” questions, the pages a search returns are mostly comparison articles, review sites, forums and local directories, not brand sites. Being named on those pages counts as much as your own page. Search the short query from step 2, list the third-party pages that rank, and work out how to be included on each one on its merits: a review profile, a correction request, data a writer can cite. Our guide to earning citations from third-party websites covers how to do that without paid placements.
Step 6: Test from the markets where Meta AI is live
Meta AI is not the same product everywhere. Meta’s own posts set out the rollout:
| Date of Meta’s post | Where | What Meta said |
|---|---|---|
| September 27, 2023 | United States | Launch in WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, with real-time information through a search partnership with Bing |
| April 18, 2024 | Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe | First expansion beyond the US, in English, plus the meta.ai website |
| March 19, 2025 | 41 European countries, the EU included, and 21 overseas territories | A chat function in six European languages, with access to information from the web |
| April 29, 2025 | Global app launch | A standalone Meta AI app; personalised responses in the US and Canada |
Sources: Meta newsroom posts of September 27, 2023, April 18, 2024, March 19, 2025 and April 29, 2025, read October 9, 2026.
Meta has added countries since, so check its current list before you plan. Ask your buyer questions from each market you sell in, in that market’s language, because the answer a person sees depends on where they are and which version of Meta AI they have.
Step 7: Measure it
Meta offers no publisher report on how often Meta AI cites or mentions your pages. Microsoft does for Copilot: the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts your citations and shows your citation share for each grounding query, as our Copilot guide explains. For Meta AI, measuring means asking the questions yourself, or using a tool that lists Meta AI.
- By hand: keep a fixed list of 10 to 20 buyer questions. Ask each one on meta.ai and in WhatsApp, signed in from the market you care about, once a week. Record whether your brand is named, which rivals are named, and any links shown. Keep the wording identical each time so changes mean something.
- With a tracker: on the dates we read their pricing pages, LLMrefs listed Meta AI among the eleven engines on its $79 plan (llmrefs.com/pricing, October 7, 2026), Promptwatch offered Meta as one of the models you can pick on its $95 Essential plan (promptwatch.com/pricing, October 1, 2026), and Trakkr listed Meta AI among the eight engines it checks daily from $100 (trakkr.ai/pricing, October 1, 2026).
Cituna and Meta AI
Cituna does not track Meta AI. If Meta AI is the engine your buyers use, the manual method above or one of those trackers is the way to measure it.
What Cituna does and does not cover here
Cituna does not ask Meta AI your prompts and has no Meta AI data. Its scans cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. It asks your buyer questions on all seven every day, records whether each answer names you, links you or names a rival, shows the pages each engine read, and writes the fix for each gap, with Google Search Console joined in so a gain can be tied to clicks. Plans start at $39 a month for 10 prompts on one brand, and API keys work on every paid plan.
Much of the work in this guide carries over. A page that ranks in Bing, states its answer first and is named on the right third-party pages tends to help with the other engines too.
Drafted with AI assistance from our own research and Search Console data, and reviewed by Rahul A before publishing. Rules and prices change; check the linked official source before you act.