Overview
JavaScript is Afghanistan's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.8% |
| Antibot | 20.8% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 40.6% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.5% |
| TLS | 16.6% |
WAF covers 93.8% of 1,065 surveyed sites. JavaScript leads secondary barriers at 40.6%. CAPTCHA (22.8%) edges Antibot (20.8%) for second place by 2 percentage points — the closest gap among the six barriers.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Afghanistan's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.8% |
| Antibot | 20.8% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.8% |
| JavaScript | 40.6% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.5% |
| TLS | 16.6% |
| Has robots.txt | 81.2% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 14.6% |
WAF leads at 93.8% across 1,065 surveyed sites. JavaScript (40.6%) is the dominant secondary barrier. CAPTCHA (22.8%) and Antibot (20.8%) are separated by just 2 percentage points. Rate Limiting (12.5%) is the least-deployed barrier.
Two-barrier sites are Afghanistan's most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.3% |
| 1 barrier | 30.6% |
| 2 barriers | 35.6% |
| 3 barriers | 16.9% |
| 4 barriers | 8.6% |
| 5 barriers | 3.6% |
| 6 barriers | 0.4% |
4.3% of sites present no detectable barriers. Two-barrier sites are the modal configuration at 35.6%. Sites running three or more barriers account for 29.5% of the surveyed set.
Most Afghanistan sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
Mean recommended tier is 1.66, median is 2. Tier 1 (Simple) covers 49.6% of sites — 0.4 points short of a majority. The remaining 50.4% require at least Easy-level browser-based retrieval methods.
Nearly nine in ten sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 49.6% |
| 2 - Easy | 37.8% |
| 3 - Moderate | 10% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.8% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.8% |
Tier 1 (Simple) covers 49.6% of sites; Tier 2 (Easy) adds 37.8%, for a combined 87.4%. Tier 3 (Moderate) accounts for 10.0%, Tier 4 for 1.8%, and Tier 5 for 0.8%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Afghanistan's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 16.1% |
| SEO / search indexing | 13.6% |
| SEO audit tools | 13.8% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7.2% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.9% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5.3% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.3% |
AI crawlers appear in robots.txt at 16.1% of all 1,065 surveyed sites — the highest of any category. SEO audit tools (13.8%) and SEO / search indexing (13.6%) are within 0.2 points of each other in second and third place.
Uniform per-agent rules cover four in ten sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 41.6% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 34.3% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.3% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.4% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.7% |
18.8% of sites have no robots.txt. Uniform per-agent rules is the most common posture at 41.6% of all sites. Path-level mixed rules apply to 34.3%. Blanket Disallow: / appears at 2.7%.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Afghanistan's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.4% | 2.2% |
| CCBot | 8.3% | 0.8% |
| ClaudeBot | 7.9% | 0.8% |
| Google-Extended | 8.2% | 1.4% |
| Bytespider | 7% | 0.5% |
| meta-externalagent | 3.2% | 0.3% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.4% | 2.4% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.5% | 2.2% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.8% | 0.2% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.7% | 1.9% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.4% | 0.8% |
GPTBot is named in a Disallow rule by 11.4% of all surveyed sites — the highest of any AI agent. ChatGPT-User holds the highest explicit Allow rate at 2.4%, just ahead of GPTBot at 2.2%.
Four Afghanistan sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Sports | 100% |
| Telecom | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Consumer Electronics | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Insurance | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
| Newspapers | 90% |
| Online Services | 90% |
| Printing | 90% |
Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Telecom each show a 100% rate — every site names at least one bot to restrict in robots.txt. Eleven additional sectors sit at 90%, producing a broadly high named-bot restriction rate across industries.
Afghanistan's Airlines sites lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 80% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Real Estate | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Sporting Goods | 70% |
| Telecom | 70% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 60% |
| Foreign Language | 60% |
| Insurance | 60% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 60% |
| Public Safety | 60% |
| Software & Dev | 60% |
| Travel & Tourism | 60% |
Airlines records the highest explicit bot Allow rate at 80%. Photography, Publishing, Real Estate, Retail, Science, Sporting Goods, and Telecom are tied at 70% — a broad second-tier cluster across seven distinct industries.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is the hardest sector at near-Moderate mean difficulty
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 30% | 10% | 40% | 30% | 60% | 70% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 20% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 10% | 70% | 40% | Tier 3 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 80% | 60% | 50% | 60% | 30% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Automotive | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 70% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 40% | 10% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 40% | 20% | 60% | 40% | 0% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 50% | 50% | 40% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 90% | 50% | 20% | 60% | 20% | 0% | 80% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 70% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 80% | 40% | 30% | 10% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 100% | 30% | 20% | 80% | 50% | 10% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 90% | 30% | 40% | 70% | 50% | 20% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury averages a mean recommended tier of 2.90 and a median of 3 — the highest values of any sector. Computer Hardware follows at mean 2.75. Industries are ranked by mean recommended browser-based retrieval tier.
Education, Chemicals, and two others share the most accessible floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 30% | 0% | 70% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 80% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 100% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 30% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 80% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Adult | 100% | 40% | 30% | 80% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Furniture | 100% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 70% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Sports | 100% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 0% | 30% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Chemicals | 90% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 0% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Construction | 90% | 20% | 40% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Distance Learning | 100% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Education | 100% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 0% | 0% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
The lowest mean recommended tier is 1.80, reached by Education, Chemicals, Construction, and Distance Learning. Education has the lowest barrier mix of the four: WAF at 100%, no Antibot, no Rate Limiting, no TLS. Industries ranked by mean tier.