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Facebook debugger has recently been returning 403 errors for our pages. It was previously working and we never did any adjustments. The problem became prevalent February 28, 2024.
same here
Hello, I had resolved the issues and write the blog about resolution. I hope this will helps https://sobiztrend.com/facebook-url-returned-a-bad-http-response-code/
come on facebook WTF
Same problem.Are you on WP with Wordfence Plugin ?
same here
Hi everyone, I’m trying to report a persistent issue with the Facebook Sharing Debugger tool.
When scraping my website, the Debugger returns a 403 Forbidden error.
However, I've confirmed the following:
✅ The site is public and fully accessible worldwide ✅ robots.txt allows all user-agents:
User-agent: * Disallow:
✅ My hosting provider (Crazy Domains) confirmed that:
facebookexternalhit is explicitly allowed
There are no ModSecurity blocks
Facebook bot connections appear as successful in server logs
✅ Other platforms (like LinkedIn) display link previews correctly ✅ I tested using the Health Check plugin to disable all plugins and still get the same error ✅ I’ve tried all the recommended steps, but the 403 persists only on Facebook
If anyone from the Meta team can look into this, or if other devs have found a solution/workaround, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!
We are having the same problem, specifically when setting the "User data deletion" URL for a Login app. What's really annoying is that this URL:
https://www.anitacameron.com/-/Home/privacy/
is rejected by Facebook, while this URL:
https://www.lasvegasbestrealestate.com/-/Home/privacy/
is accepted. Both URLs go into the same backend code, and have identical robots.txt files. WTF, Facebook, indeed.
The FB engine is obviously not able to handle robots.txt files in the best possible way, try to put allow:* in the FB section and invalidate the robots.txt with the batch inalidator (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/batch/).
Hi, Did you manage to find a solution to the above mentioned error? This issue also affected a website I manage. The server firewall blocks requests as it retrieves data from links every second.
Hello Jozsef,
Update robots.txt of your website. https://sobiztrend.com/facebook-url-returned-a-bad-http-response-code/
I'm reading all thread but still have the same problem here https://www.fondoposte.it/ Can anyone help me please?
For me, I made sure that Cloudflare wasn't generating its own robots.txt to disallow AI bots. All In One SEO for WordPress has that feature now, so I didn't need Cloudflare to run that.
I also add my Facebook page meta ID to the head of the site.
And, I followed the instruction to allow the User-agent: facebookexternalhit
The Facebook debugger still reported an error. However, I stepped away from the computer for a few hours, and upon returning, the issue was resolved.
I have a rather strange encounter with the 403 response status for 2 of the websites I worked on when I scrap any links or pages from those 2 websites, but my colleagues who then went and scrap the same 2 websites, they get 200 response status. The websites are public facing, the websites' robots.txt did not block the User-agent: facebookexternalhit and in fact even allow it and place it at the beginning of the robots.txt file!! Cloudfront and Cloudflare settings on those 2 websites did not block any bots/crawlers. So now I suspect getting 403 response status from just using the Facebook Debugger tool to scrap website after YOU logged in with your own Facebook account might be different from other Facebook users who also scrap the same URLs. I seriously need help on this kind of issue... like what's with the differences of different legit Facebook users logged into use the Facebook Debugger Tool can get different http response status!!!
Still unresolved.
Fix your shit facebook.
If CloudFlare proxy is enabled for your domain, that's the issue. I disabled it, and everything returned to normal.
Read this thread https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/1085796049211789/
Same problem.Are you on WP with Wordfence Plugin ?
same problem
You use Wordfence plug-in on Wordpress ?
I can confirm similar behavior on multiple independent websites hosted on different configurations.
I tested:
disabling ModSecurity robots.txt configuration different WordPress/theme versions direct server responses outside Facebook debugger
Everything returns HTTP 200 correctly for normal requests and other crawlers, while Facebook debugger still randomly reports 403 or 429 responses.
This looks more like an issue with facebookexternalhit crawling/rate limiting than a website configuration problem.
Hey Pawel, did you find any fix? I’ve been facing a similar issue for the past few days as well.
Facebook has apparently added an explanation now: This response code could be due to a robots.txt block. Please allowlist facebookexternalhit on your sites robots.txt config to utilize Facebook scraping
I have no blocks on facebookexternalhit on my site robots. but already allowed it, still same issue.
+1 Same problem
+1 Same problem
+1 Same issue here too, for a couple of days now
Same issue same timeframe!
still not resolve.
Report here https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/1085796049211789/
Same issue here https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/945101610321800/
No chance we're going to get a quick resolution from this :(
No hope of being able to report to Facebook
Same issue. We thought it might be Cloudflare WAF rules, but we created a Skip exception rule and so that was not it. We can replicate the user agent and we get a 200 with cURL request. All other open graph tools are able to fetch without issue.
Exactly the same problem. I thought I was going crazy already. It started with a supposed issue with the og:image on just one page. Was that the same issue you had?
Did you solve de issue? We have similar problem.
We still haven’t found a solution…
Plus 1. We are also experiencing this same issue.
