why facebook is flooding my site?

Question

Every hour and a half Im getting a flood of requests from http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php.

I know what theses requests should mean, but this behavior is very odd.

On a regular basis (aproximatedly every 1,5 hour), Im getting dozen of these requests per minute to very old posts of my site - and this is giving me a headache since they are not cached...

Does anyone know what this could be? In what cases facebook does that?

Leo,,

log sample:

66.220.158.251, 200.147.35.64 (5715) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:44:40 -0300] "GET /2009/10/catraca-ensina-como-fazer-um-bom-negocio-no-sebo/ HTTP/1.0" 200 23538 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
69.171.229.251, 200.147.96.73 (590684) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:08 -0300] "GET /2012/02/ganhador-da-promocao-comece-2012-discotecando/ HTTP/1.0" 200 22716 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
69.171.242.248, 200.147.35.65 (661588) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:28 -0300] "GET /2012/01/elza-soares-e-trio-no-palco-do-auditorio-ibirapuera/ HTTP/1.0" 200 24699 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
66.220.149.248, 200.147.35.65 (5367) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:43 -0300] "GET /2011/03/projeto-coisa-fina-leva-musica-instrumental-ao-ccsp/ HTTP/1.0" 200 22555 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

Answer 1

Facebook Linter will be visiting your pages periodically to update the OpenGraph data, this isn't something you can control, but there is couple of points you should consider:

• Have correct and appropriate Cache/ETags for your pages.
• Cache the data (at least for anonymous users, which should be the case for Facebook bot).