Overview
JavaScript is Sierra Leone's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.2% |
| Antibot | 17.5% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 37.8% |
| Rate Limiting | 11.7% |
| TLS | 16.8% |
WAF covers 93.2% of Sierra Leone sites. Among the five secondary barriers, JavaScript ranks first at 37.8%, followed by CAPTCHA at 22.8%. Rate Limiting is the lowest secondary barrier at 11.7%.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript is Sierra Leone's dominant secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.2% |
| Antibot | 17.5% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 37.8% |
| Rate Limiting | 11.7% |
| TLS | 16.8% |
| Has robots.txt | 82.6% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 14.9% |
WAF reaches 93.2% of Sierra Leone's 858 surveyed sites. JavaScript renders 37.8% inaccessible without a browser. CAPTCHA, Antibot, TLS, and Rate Limiting each apply to fewer than 23% of sites.
One barrier is Sierra Leone's most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.3% |
| 1 barrier | 34.7% |
| 2 barriers | 32.3% |
| 3 barriers | 17.9% |
| 4 barriers | 7.2% |
| 5 barriers | 3.3% |
| 6 barriers | 0.2% |
4.3% of Sierra Leone sites carry no access barriers. The single largest group — 34.7% — deploy exactly one barrier. Sites with three or more barriers account for 28.6% of the total.
Most Sierra Leone sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.6 |
The median recommended retrieval tier for Sierra Leone is Tier 1, meaning the majority of its 858 sites are accessible via HTTP alone. The mean of 1.55 reflects a minority pulling the score upward.
Nine in ten Sierra Leone sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 56.4% |
| 2 - Easy | 34.4% |
| 3 - Moderate | 7.1% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.4% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.7% |
Tier 1 covers 56.4% of Sierra Leone sites and Tier 2 a further 34.4%. Tier 3 applies to 7.1%, while Tiers 4 and 5 together account for just 2.1%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers are Sierra Leone's most-cited robots.txt target
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 16.3% |
| SEO / search indexing | 11.8% |
| SEO audit tools | 15% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.2% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.3% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.5% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.3% |
AI crawlers are named in robots.txt by 16.3% of all Sierra Leone sites, ahead of SEO audit tools at 15.0% and SEO/search indexing at 11.8%. Monitoring bots are cited by just 0.3%.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Sierra Leone's robots.txt postures
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 43.9% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.6% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.7% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.4% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 3.1% |
43.9% of Sierra Leone sites use uniform per-agent rules. A further 32.6% mix path-level rules for the same agent. 17.4% of sites publish no robots.txt at all.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Sierra Leone's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.4% | 2.3% |
| CCBot | 8.9% | 1.2% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.5% | 1.2% |
| Google-Extended | 8.7% | 1.5% |
| Bytespider | 8.5% | 0.8% |
| meta-externalagent | 3.7% | 0.1% |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.1% | 2.6% |
| PerplexityBot | 6.2% | 2.3% |
| Applebot-Extended | 5.6% | 0.7% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.8% | 1.5% |
| anthropic-ai | 5.2% | 0.9% |
GPTBot appears in a Disallow rule on 11.4% of all Sierra Leone sites — more than any other AI agent. ChatGPT-User receives the most explicit Allow rules, at 2.6% of sites.
Multiple Sierra Leone sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 100% |
| Civil Engineering | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Furniture | 100% |
| Graphic Design | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Airlines | 90% |
| Automotive | 90% |
| Biotech | 90% |
| Consumer Electronics | 90% |
| Entertainment | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Investment | 90% |
| Libraries | 90% |
Beauty & Cosmetics, Civil Engineering, Design, Furniture, Graphic Design, and Retail each show 100% of their sites naming at least one bot in a Disallow rule.
Sierra Leone's Airlines sites sites lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 87.5% |
| Graphic Design | 83.3% |
| Medical Devices | 80% |
| Publishing | 80% |
| Jewellery & Luxury | 70% |
| Maritime | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Travel & Tourism | 70% |
| Architecture | 66.7% |
| Chemicals | 60% |
| Ecology & Environment | 60% |
| Music | 60% |
| Non-Profit | 60% |
90.0% of Airlines sites name at least one bot in an explicit Allow rule — the highest rate across all sectors. Civil Engineering follows at 87.5% and Graphic Design at 83.3%.
Industry Patterns
Hospitality is Sierra Leone's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 100% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 70% | 10% | 10% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 90% | 10% | 10% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 60% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 40% | 20% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 80% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 30% | 10% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 20% | 0% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 90% | 10% | 20% | 10% | 0% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 80% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Telecom | 90% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 0% | 20% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Airlines | 80% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 40% | Tier 2 |
Hospitality records the highest mean recommended tier at 2.60, with a median of Tier 3 — the only sector in Sierra Leone's top 15 to reach that median. JavaScript affects 60% of Hospitality sites.
Five Sierra Leone sectors share the most accessible floor at mean Simple.60
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banking | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Ecology & Environment | 100% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Music | 100% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Foreign Language | 100% | 28.6% | 28.6% | 57.1% | 0% | 28.6% | 85.7% | 14.3% | Tier 2 |
| Adult | 100% | 50% | 30% | 70% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Distance Learning | 100% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Photography | 90% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 20% | 90% | 80% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Publishing | 90% | 20% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 90% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Science | 100% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 30% | 10% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Travel & Tourism | 100% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 0% | 80% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Advertising & Mktg | 100% | 40% | 50% | 50% | 0% | 30% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 100% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Healthcare | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Libraries | 100% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 0% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Museums | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 60% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Advertising & Marketing, Beauty & Cosmetics, Healthcare, Libraries, and Museums all record a mean tier of 1.60 — the lowest in Sierra Leone's bottom 15 sectors.