Small businesses typically want AI to find and recommend their business. Meta’s new terms made me pause.
I spend a good part of my working week helping founders get found. A new Google update, a new AI search tool, a new way ChatGPT decides who to recommend, and I’m usually the one saying, “Let’s make sure your content and your website setup make it easy for them to discover, understand, and recommend you.” So when I read that Meta’s new business terms let it send bots to YOUR website, the one that doesn’t live on Meta, starting October 30, I paused. I wanted to know whether Meta had gone too far, and what exactly we’re all agreeing to.
If your business has a Facebook Page, an Instagram business profile or a WhatsApp business account, or uses Meta Business Suite, you agree to those terms just by continuing to use them after October 30.
Why Meta Wants Your Website
Meta makes nearly all its money from ads. Last quarter, $59.4 billion of its $60.8 billion in revenue came from advertising, according to Meta’s quarterly filing. That’s about 98 cents of every dollar Meta earns. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop is winning at shopping inside the app. EMARKETER forecasts its US sales will reach $23.4 billion this year, because people can buy without ever leaving TikTok.
Meta wants shoppers to stay inside Facebook and Instagram too. Starting October 28, two days before the new terms take effect, Meta will turn on product browsing in ads that are already running unless advertisers opt out. A tap on your ad may open a Meta page with your product details and personalized suggestions before the shopper reaches your site.
When Meta defended the new crawling language, it said the goal was pulling accurate information about products for sale on business websites to power its ad and content recommendations, as PPC Land reported. Put those two changes side by side and the plan comes into focus. Meta wants to read your website so it can show your products inside its own apps.
The Net/Net, So You Have the Details for Coffee Conversations
The 2024 terms, in effect until October 30, have no website crawling language at all. The new version adds a paragraph that lets Meta, or anyone acting for it, use scrapers, bots and crawlers, and create test credentials, to reach the web pages “associated with your products or services” and keep pulling updates from them. The stated purpose is to provide, develop, improve, research and maintain Meta’s advertising and business products, such as tools that help you build ads, show people information about your products and connect you with interested customers.
The test credentials part matters most for small businesses. A Cornell law professor told Nieman Lab it could technically let Meta sign up as a fake user to get past a registration wall. That means a free “sign up to download” form doesn’t keep anything private.
The terms also reach further than ads. Business use now includes marketing messages, product catalogs, Ads Manager and Meta Business Suite, so a company that has never run an ad is still covered. If you don’t agree, the terms say you may stop using Meta’s products for business, and there’s no way to opt out of the crawling paragraph alone.
Meta also keeps telling people they can control its bots with robots.txt, the small file on your website that tells crawlers what to skip. I searched the October 30 terms for it, and it isn’t mentioned anywhere. So the promise lives in Meta’s statements and its help pages for developers. The terms you agree to say nothing about it.
The part I’d read twice is a brand-new AI features section. If you use Meta’s AI tools to write ad copy, build creative or answer customers, you agree those tools can make mistakes and that you alone carry the risk for whatever they produce.
What to Do Before October 30
Set aside about an hour. You can do most of this yourself, and one step goes faster with whoever manages your website.
- Find out which websites Meta considers yours. The terms cover any site “associated with” your business, so start with the full list. Log in at business.facebook.com/latest/settings. Under Accounts, you’ll see every Page, Instagram account, WhatsApp account and ad account tied to your business. Under Brand safety, then Domains, you’ll see the web addresses you’ve verified with Meta. Also check the website on your Facebook Page, the link in your Instagram bio, and the pages your ads send people to, including accounts an agency or former employee set up.
- Check what’s public on your site, and move anything that shouldn’t be. Because of those test logins, a page anyone can sign up for won’t keep Meta out. Private material belongs somewhere you approve each person yourself, like a shared folder or an invite-only client portal. To see what’s out there, search Google for site:yourwebsite.com, and site:yourwebsite.com filetype:pdf for old PDFs. Look for price sheets, client lists, proposals, staff details and test pages.
- Keep your storefront open to Meta’s bots, and close the back office. If you sell products, you want Meta reading your product pages. That’s how your ads, shared links and Meta AI answers show the right photos, prices and descriptions. Meta’s crawler page explains what each bot does, and three of them are worth leaving open: FacebookExternalHit, which builds the preview when someone shares your link; Meta-ExternalAds, which supports Meta’s ads and business tools; and Meta-WebIndexer, which helps Meta AI cite and link to you. Meta-ExternalAgent is the judgment call, because Meta says it handles both AI training and improving its products, and it doesn’t say what you’d lose by blocking it. To close the back office, your web person can block a single folder, like a client area, instead of blocking Meta entirely. You can see your current file by typing yourwebsite.com/robots.txt into your browser. Robots.txt is a request Meta says it honors, and the contract doesn’t promise it, so step 2 is your real protection. Meta says changes can take up to 24 hours, so screenshot the file afterward with the date showing.
- If you run Facebook or Instagram ads, decide on product browsing before October 28. Some ad taps will open a Meta product page with suggestions before your site, built from your product catalog. Look for the message Meta sent advertisers about product browsing and click Opt out if you want shoppers going straight to your website. After October 28, you can still turn it off ad by ad in each ad’s Advantage+ creative and destination settings. If you leave it on, check your catalog in Business Suite settings under Data sources, then Catalogs, so prices and photos are current.
- If you use Meta’s AI tools, send the AI Features section to whoever runs them. That’s usually your agency or whoever set up your AI ad copy, automated replies or chat assistant.
Before You Post Next Week
Before anyone on your team posts to your Facebook Page next week, block 30 minutes to make that list of accounts and linked websites. That list is where you start making sure that when Meta reads your website to build better ads, it finds current information you actually want it to use.
If you’re sorting through this for your own business too, I’d love to compare notes. Send me a message.
Donnine Souhrada is the founder and chief strategist of DearCustomer.Marketing, where she helps founder-led businesses become easier and faster to run. She cuts down on disconnected tools and manual processes, speeds up customer response to keep the sales pipeline moving, and gets leaders the numbers and next steps they need, delivered to them instead of buried across a dozen apps.
Donnine brings 20 years of experience building revenue engines across data, media, SaaS, and edtech to small and mid-market businesses. She works alongside her son, Beau Souhrada, DearCustomer.Marketing’s AI and automation architect, who also designs the AI workflows and automations behind client systems. She writes Built to Scale for founders who want to grow without everything depending on them.