Overview
JavaScript is Bahrain's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.5% |
| Antibot | 21.6% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 41.8% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.8% |
| TLS | 18.2% |
WAF is near-universal at 93.5%. Among secondary barriers, Antibot (21.6%) and TLS (18.2%) rank above CAPTCHA — a pattern distinct from the barrier ordering seen in many markets.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript is the most-deployed secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.5% |
| Antibot | 21.6% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 41.8% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.8% |
| TLS | 18.2% |
| Has robots.txt | 80.1% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.8% |
JavaScript challenges sit well ahead of CAPTCHA (22.3%) and Antibot (21.6%). Rate Limiting is the least-used secondary layer, appearing on just 12.8% of Bahrain sites.
Two-barrier sites are Bahrain's most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.3% |
| 1 barrier | 30.8% |
| 2 barriers | 33.8% |
| 3 barriers | 17.2% |
| 4 barriers | 9.7% |
| 5 barriers | 3.7% |
| 6 barriers | 0.5% |
One-barrier sites (30.8%) are the next largest group. Only 0.5% of Bahrain sites deploy all six barriers simultaneously, while 4.3% carry none at all.
Most Bahrain sites are Easy to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
The median site requires Standard browser access. A mean of 1.66 reflects the weight of Tier 1 sites (48.6%), with Tier 3 and above needed for just over one in eight domains.
Most Bahrain sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 48.6% |
| 2 - Easy | 39.7% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.3% |
| 4 - Complex | 2.1% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.3% |
Tier 1 covers 48.6% of sites; Tier 2 adds another 39.7%. Tiers 4 and 5 combined account for only 2.4%, indicating that high-complexity access requirements are rare.
robots.txt
AI crawlers are the most-cited bot category
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.7% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.4% |
| SEO audit tools | 14.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7.8% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.5% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.5% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.7% |
AI crawlers appear in 15.7% of all Bahrain site rules — above SEO audit tools (14.1%) and SEO/search bots (12.4%). Monitoring bots are named on fewer than 1% of sites.
Uniform per-agent rules are the dominant robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 42.5% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.3% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.2% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.9% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.6% |
Path-level mixed rules apply on 32.3% of sites. Blanket Disallow: / and mixed AI posture each account for under 3%, leaving uniform rules as the clear majority approach.
GPTBot draws the most Disallow rules among AI agents
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.3% | 2.7% |
| CCBot | 8.5% | 1% |
| ClaudeBot | 8% | 1.3% |
| Google-Extended | 8.3% | 1.7% |
| Bytespider | 7% | 0.5% |
| meta-externalagent | 3% | 0.3% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.8% | 2.8% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.8% | 2.6% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.8% | 0.3% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.9% | 2.3% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.9% | 0.9% |
GPTBot is blocked on 11.3% of all Bahrain sites — the highest among AI crawlers. ChatGPT-User and PerplexityBot receive the broadest explicit Allow entries at 2.8% and 2.6% respectively.
Design, Entertainment, Retail, and four other sectors name bots on every site
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Printing | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Agriculture | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Computer & Video Games | 90% |
| Consumer Electronics | 90% |
| Events | 90% |
| Food & Beverages | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Machinery | 90% |
Seven Bahrain industry categories show a 100% named-bot Disallow rate. A further eight sectors — including Healthcare, Agriculture and Food & Beverages — reach 90%.
Airlines leads explicit bot Allow rules
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 80% |
| Publishing | 80% |
| Retail | 80% |
| Market Research | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Telecom | 70% |
| Travel & Tourism | 70% |
| Veterinary | 70% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Civil Engineering | 60% |
| Education | 60% |
| Events | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Music | 60% |
| Non-Profit | 60% |
Those three sectors each show an 80% Allow rate. Market Research, Photography, Telecom, Travel & Tourism and Veterinary follow at 70%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is the hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 60% | 70% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 20% | 50% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 40% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 70% | 60% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 0% | 70% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 0% | 0% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 70% | 10% | 10% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 40% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 80% | 30% | 20% | 40% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 20% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 50% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Banking | 100% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury leads with a Moderate median. Furniture, Hospitality, Human Resources, Real Estate, and Retail share the next highest mean; all but Retail also return a Moderate median.
Wholesalers, Visual Art, and Publishing share the most accessible floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Education | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 80% | 70% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 10% | 40% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 40% | 10% | 70% | 20% | 0% | 90% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 30% | 0% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 90% | 10% | 20% | 40% | 0% | 40% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Music | 100% | 40% | 40% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Publishing | 90% | 20% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 90% | 60% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 40% | 50% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 40% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 90% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 30% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Eight sectors share a tier mean of 1.90, with Wholesalers appearing last in the ranking. Despite high WAF rates, these industries carry low Antibot and Rate Limiting coverage, pulling access cost down.