Overview
JavaScript is Taiwan's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 90.9% |
| Antibot | 21.9% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 42.1% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.2% |
| TLS | 18.7% |
WAF reaches 90.9%, a touch below the global norm. JavaScript leads secondary barriers at 42.1%. Antibot (21.9%) and TLS (18.7%) both exceed their global rates, giving Taiwan a more distributed secondary profile.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Taiwan's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 90.9% |
| Antibot | 21.9% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 42.1% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.2% |
| TLS | 18.7% |
| Has robots.txt | 78.9% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.9% |
WAF is at 90.9%. JavaScript at 42.1% heads secondary barriers. Antibot at 21.9% and TLS at 18.7% are both elevated. CAPTCHA at 22.3% and Rate Limiting at 13.2% are the remaining secondaries.
Two-barrier sites are Taiwan's most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 6.5% |
| 1 barrier | 27.8% |
| 2 barriers | 34.6% |
| 3 barriers | 17.4% |
| 4 barriers | 8.9% |
| 5 barriers | 4.2% |
| 6 barriers | 0.5% |
Two concurrent barriers is the modal configuration at 34.6%. Sites with no barriers account for 6.5%. About 31% of sites deploy three or more barriers simultaneously.
Most Taiwan sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
Browser-mode median sits at Tier 2, meaning more than 50% of sites cannot be retrieved by HTTP alone. The mean of 1.68 reflects a market where Tier 2 demand is substantial alongside a large Tier 1 base.
Simple and Easy sites nearly split the market
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 47.1% |
| 2 - Easy | 40.4% |
| 3 - Moderate | 10.1% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.8% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.6% |
Tier 1 covers 47.1% of sites and Tier 2 covers 40.4% — an unusually even split. Tier 3 accounts for a further 10.1%. Advanced tiers (4 and 5) together affect 2.4% of sites.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Taiwan's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.6% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12% |
| SEO audit tools | 13.2% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7.9% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.3% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.2% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
AI crawlers appear in rules on 15.6% of all sites — the most-cited category. SEO audit tools (13.2%) rank second, ahead of SEO/search indexing bots (12.0%). Archive crawlers are named by 4.2% of sites.
Uniform rules are Taiwan's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 42.7% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 31.4% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 1.9% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.2% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.7% |
Uniform per-agent rules apply on 42.7% of all sites. Path-level mixed rules cover 31.4%. No robots.txt is present on 21.1% of sites — the largest share among these five posture categories.
GPTBot is blocked by more than one site in ten
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.6% | 1.8% |
| CCBot | 8.6% | 0.8% |
| ClaudeBot | 8% | 0.9% |
| Google-Extended | 8% | 1.1% |
| Bytespider | 6.9% | 0.4% |
| meta-externalagent | 3% | 0.1% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.9% | 2.3% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.6% | 1.8% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.7% | 0.3% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.8% | 1.7% |
| anthropic-ai | 5.1% | 0.7% |
GPTBot is named in a Disallow rule on 11.6% of all sites — the most blocked AI agent. CCBot (8.6%) and ClaudeBot (8.0%) follow. ChatGPT-User has the highest Allow rate at 2.3%.
Six sectors have every site naming at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Newspapers | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| Automotive | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Consulting | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Newspapers, Retail, and Visual Art each show 100%: every sampled site names at least one bot to restrict. Adult, Apparel, Automotive, and others follow at 90%.
Automotive leads explicit bot Allow rules
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Automotive | 80% |
| Airlines | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Travel & Tourism | 70% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Facilities Services | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Retail | 60% |
| Software & Dev | 60% |
| Sports | 60% |
| Training & Cert. | 60% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 50% |
| Civil Engineering | 50% |
Automotive is the top sector for explicit bot access, with 80% of sampled sites naming at least one bot in an Allow rule. Airlines, Photography, Publishing, Science, and Travel & Tourism each follow at 70%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is the hardest sector — averaging Moderate difficulty
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 50% | 60% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 30% | Tier 3 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 0% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 70% | 50% | 50% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 80% | 30% | 0% | 50% | 20% | 40% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 80% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Furniture | 100% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 90% | 0% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 0% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 90% | 10% | 0% | 60% | 10% | 20% | 100% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 20% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 80% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Chemicals | 80% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 0% | 20% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury records the highest mean at 3.00 — full Moderate difficulty. Real Estate (2.90) follows. Equipment & Supplies, Human Resources, and Hospitality all share a mean of 2.50, each straddling Easy and Moderate.
Airlines, Automotive, Pharmaceuticals, and Telecom 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 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 0% | 50% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Public Safety | 100% | 30% | 50% | 70% | 20% | 40% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 90% | 50% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 40% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 70% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 70% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 30% | 50% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Veterinary | 100% | 30% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 80% | 0% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 60% | 50% | 80% | 50% | 0% | 90% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Airlines | 80% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 20% | 20% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 80% | 0% | 0% | 40% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Pharmaceuticals | 70% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Telecom | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 0% | 10% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Airlines, Automotive, Pharmaceuticals, and Telecom each record the lowest mean recommended tier at 1.90. The bottom-15 group spans from 2.00 down to this floor, with most sectors landing at median Tier 2.