Overview
JavaScript is Nigeria's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.7% |
| Antibot | 20.9% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 41.9% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.3% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
WAF covers 93.7% of Nigeria's 1,111 surveyed sites. Among the remaining five barriers, JavaScript is the furthest ahead at 41.9% — roughly double the CAPTCHA (22.8%) and Antibot (20.9%) rates below it.
Barrier Landscape
Four of Nigeria's five secondary barriers cluster well below JavaScript
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.7% |
| Antibot | 20.9% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 41.9% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.3% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
| Has robots.txt | 81.7% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 14.4% |
After WAF at 93.7%, JavaScript stands at 41.9%. The four remaining barriers — CAPTCHA 22.8%, Antibot 20.9%, TLS 18.3%, and Rate Limiting 13.3% — all fall below 25%, leaving a clear gap between JavaScript and the rest.
Two-barrier sites are Nigeria's most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4% |
| 1 barrier | 29.8% |
| 2 barriers | 34.6% |
| 3 barriers | 19.1% |
| 4 barriers | 8.6% |
| 5 barriers | 3.6% |
| 6 barriers | 0.4% |
4.0% of Nigeria's sites carry no detectable barrier. Two barriers is the single most common configuration at 34.6%. Sites carrying three or more barriers collectively account for 31.7% of the sample.
Most Nigeria sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
A mean of 1.72 and median of 2 place Nigeria in the Easy tier range overall. Tier 1 accounts for 45.2% of sites — just short of a majority. The 13.5% at Tiers 3–5 pull the mean above the median.
Most Nigeria sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 45.2% |
| 2 - Easy | 41.3% |
| 3 - Moderate | 10.2% |
| 4 - Complex | 2.5% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.8% |
Tier 1 covers 45.2% of sites; Tier 2 adds 41.3%. Tier 3 accounts for 10.2%, Tier 4 for 2.5%, and Tier 5 for 0.8% — a long but thin tail of harder-to-access sites.
robots.txt
AI crawlers are the most-named bot category in Nigeria's robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.9% |
| SEO / search indexing | 11.9% |
| SEO audit tools | 14.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.3% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.5% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.1% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
AI crawlers are mentioned by 15.9% of Nigeria's 1,111 sites — the largest share of any bot category. SEO audit tools follow at 14.1% and SEO / search indexing at 11.9%. Figures cover all sites, including those without robots.txt.
Uniform per-agent rules are Nigeria's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 42.2% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 34% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.8% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.7% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.5% |
18.3% of Nigeria's sites publish no robots.txt. Of those that do, 42.2% of all sites use uniform per-agent rules. Path-level mixed rules account for 34.0%. Blanket Disallow: / is present on 2.5% of all sites.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Nigeria's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.6% | 2.3% |
| CCBot | 9% | 1.2% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.7% | 1.2% |
| Google-Extended | 8.8% | 1.7% |
| Bytespider | 7.7% | 0.5% |
| meta-externalagent | 3.3% | 0.2% |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.1% | 2.8% |
| PerplexityBot | 6.1% | 2.1% |
| Applebot-Extended | 5.1% | 0.4% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.3% | 2% |
| anthropic-ai | 5.5% | 1% |
GPTBot is Disallowed by 11.6% of Nigeria's 1,111 sites and explicitly Allowed by 2.3%. ChatGPT-User carries the highest explicit Allow rate at 2.8%. All figures include sites without robots.txt.
Multiple Nigeria sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Apparel & Fashion | 100% |
| Consumer Electronics | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Telecom | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Banking | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Computer & Video Games | 90% |
| Foreign Language | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Investment | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
Apparel & Fashion, Consumer Electronics, Design, Entertainment, and Telecom each have every surveyed site naming at least one bot to restrict in robots.txt. A further ten sectors stand at 90%.
Nigeria's Airlines and Science sites lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 80% |
| Science | 80% |
| Investment | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Travel & Tourism | 70% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 60% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Farms & Ranches | 60% |
| Foreign Language | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Hospitality | 60% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 60% |
| Real Estate | 60% |
Airlines and Science share the top position — 80% of sites in each sector name at least one bot in an explicit Allow rule. Investment, Photography, Publishing, Retail, and Travel & Tourism follow at 70%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is Nigeria's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 10% | 0% | 30% | 50% | 50% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 30% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 80% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 70% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 50% | Tier 3 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 70% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 0% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 10% | 50% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 30% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 40% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 80% | 60% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 80% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 80% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 40% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 50% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 90% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Telecom | 90% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 0% | 40% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury posts the highest mean browser tier at 3.10 across Nigeria's surveyed sites. Furniture follows at 2.95, and Real Estate at 2.70. All 15 industries in this chart average above 2.0.
Eight Nigeria sectors share the most accessible floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wine & Spirits | 100% | 50% | 20% | 40% | 40% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 40% | 0% | 70% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 80% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Public Safety | 100% | 30% | 50% | 60% | 20% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 100% | 0% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 80% | 20% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 10% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Construction | 90% | 0% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Events | 100% | 10% | 10% | 80% | 30% | 0% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 80% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Public Policy | 100% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 50% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 40% | Tier 2 |
The most accessible industries in Nigeria average mean tier 2.00 — a floor shared by eight sectors including Automotive, Construction, Design, Events, Mail & Delivery, Public Policy, Recruitment & Staffing, and Reference.