State of Web Access
Articles from the Zyte blog in State of Web Access.
JavaScript renders almost half of sites invisible
JavaScript renders 40.6% of top sites unreadable to a plain HTTP request, not by design but as a side effect of how the modern web is built.
Rate limiting is a roadblock, not a speed limit
Rate limiting sounds like a speed limit, but 93.7% of rate-limited sites block on the very first request. It is an identity check, not a throttle.
CAPTCHA is more than just a puzzle piece
The famously awkward security mechanism has quietly become an invisible behavioral scoring system. Two vendors enable 89% of CAPTCHAs, and the smallest sites use it most.
Firewalls run the web, just not on purpose
Web Application Firewalls run on 92.4% of the top websites, but most arrived bundled with a CDN and were never tuned to resist automated access.
Four in 10 sites block AI bots with robots.txt
Nearly four in 10 of the world's top sites are now closed to well-behaved AI crawlers. Here's what operators actually do with robots.txt, and which AI agents they block or welcome.
75% of the web uses robots.txt - here's how
Three in four of the world's top sites publish a robots.txt, yet few name individual crawlers. A look inside the web's advisory layer: coverage, sophistication and limits.
Revealed: How retailers use tech to block the bots
The web’s big general marketplaces exist to be browsed by everyone. But they are also the second most defended sector online, shutting the door on AI crawlers.
The web is being priced, not blocked
Zyte's State of Web Access research finds new barriers making web scraping more difficult. We interview the researcher who says that doesn't mean the opportunity is over.
Fashion websites are the hardest to size up
While publishers fight over AI crawlers, fashion has built some of the most heavily defended shop windows on the web. So, which controls are in fashion, in fashion?
The State of Web Access: How different industries behave to bots
Zyte's large-scale audit of web access controls shows how different kinds of businesses exhibit different policies.
The State of Web Access: How today's web raises its barriers
The largest ever audit of web access control mechanisms lifts the lid on how sites are regulating programmatic visits.