Overview
JavaScript is Belgium's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.8% |
| Antibot | 20% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 43.3% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.2% |
| TLS | 17.7% |
WAF stands at 92.8%, just below the 93.1% global rate. JavaScript (43.3%) leads secondary barriers and sits above the 41.3% global norm. CAPTCHA (22.3%), Antibot (20.0%), TLS (17.7%), and Rate Limiting (12.2%) are all close to global levels. Sample: 1,111 sites.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Belgium's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.8% |
| Antibot | 20% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 43.3% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.2% |
| TLS | 17.7% |
| Has robots.txt | 81% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.8% |
WAF is deployed on 92.8% of Belgian sites. JavaScript leads among secondary barriers at 43.3%, followed by CAPTCHA at 22.3%. Antibot reaches 20.0%, TLS stands at 17.7%, and Rate Limiting at 12.2%.
Most Belgian sites carry at least two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 5% |
| 1 barrier | 30% |
| 2 barriers | 34.2% |
| 3 barriers | 18.2% |
| 4 barriers | 8.5% |
| 5 barriers | 3.9% |
| 6 barriers | 0.4% |
5.0% of sites carry no barriers. The modal count is two at 34.2%. Sites with three or more barriers account for 31.0% combined: 18.2% at three, 8.5% at four, and 4.3% at five or six.
Most Belgian sites are Easy to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.6 |
The median recommended retrieval tier is 2, meaning fewer than half of sites are reachable via plain HTTP. The mean tier is 1.64.
Nearly nine in ten Belgian sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 49.3% |
| 2 - Easy | 39.5% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.3% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.6% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.3% |
Tier 1 holds 49.3% of sites and Tier 2 holds 39.5%, a combined 88.8%. Tier 3 stands at 9.3%, Tier 4 at 1.6%, and Tier 5 at 0.3%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Belgium's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.4% |
| SEO / search indexing | 13.2% |
| SEO audit tools | 14.5% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.3% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.7% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5.8% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
Across all 1,111 Belgium sites, 15.4% name at least one AI crawler. SEO audit tools appear in 14.5%, SEO/search indexing in 13.2%. Commercial scrapers reach 8.3%, archive crawlers 5.8%, and social scrapers 5.7%.
Uniform rules are Belgium's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 43.3% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.7% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.4% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.3% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.5% |
19.0% of sites have no robots.txt. Uniform per-agent rules are most common at 43.3% of all sites, followed by path-mixed rules at 32.7%. Blanket Disallow: / applies to 2.5% of all sites; mixed-AI posture to 2.3%.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Belgium's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.2% | 2.3% |
| CCBot | 8.5% | 1% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.2% | 1.2% |
| Google-Extended | 7.9% | 1.2% |
| Bytespider | 6.7% | 0.3% |
| meta-externalagent | 2.9% | 0.2% |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.3% | 2.5% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.5% | 2% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.7% | 0.5% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.8% | 1.7% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.6% | 0.8% |
GPTBot appears in Disallow rules on 11.2% of all 1,111 Belgium sites. CCBot is second at 8.5%. On the allow side, ChatGPT-User leads at 2.5%, followed by PerplexityBot at 2.0%.
Five Belgium sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Agriculture | 90% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| Automotive | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Crafts | 90% |
| Fishery | 90% |
| General | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Retail, and Visual Art each reach 100% — every site names at least one bot to restrict in a Disallow rule. Ten further sectors stand at 90%.
Belgium's Airlines, Photography, and Publishing sectors lead in allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Sports | 70% |
| Agriculture | 60% |
| Automotive | 60% |
| Crafts | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Healthcare | 60% |
| Investment | 60% |
| Oil & Gas | 60% |
| Public Policy | 60% |
| Real Estate | 60% |
Six sectors — Airlines, Photography, Publishing, Retail, Science, and Sports — all reach 70%, the highest rate in Belgium, for sites naming at least one bot to allow in an Allow rule. Nine further sectors stand at 60%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is Belgium's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Automotive | 100% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 20% | 20% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Furniture | 100% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 40% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 60% | 60% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 40% | 20% | 60% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 30% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 20% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 0% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 10% | 0% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 20% | 10% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Wine & Spirits | 100% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 70% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury posts the highest mean recommended tier at 2.70. Automotive and Beauty & Cosmetics follow at 2.40. A broad mid-table cluster from Customer Services down to Design spans 2.00–2.30.
Nine Belgian sectors share the most accessible floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Machinery | 90% | 10% | 0% | 60% | 0% | 0% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 0% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 0% | 10% | 60% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 40% | 20% | 80% | 40% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 100% | 0% | 30% | 30% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Crafts | 100% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 80% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 0% | 40% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Printing | 100% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 0% | 10% | 100% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Public Safety | 100% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 60% | 30% | 50% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Equipment & Supplies, Machinery, Mail & Delivery, Maritime, Medical Devices, Restaurants, Sporting Goods, Textiles & Nonwovens, and Transport & Logistics all share the lowest mean tier of 2.00. Crafts, Manufacturing, Printing, Public Safety, Reference, and Visual Art follow at 1.90.