Overview
Spanish sites carry barriers close to global norms
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.6% |
| Antibot | 20.2% |
| CAPTCHA | 23.2% |
| JavaScript | 42.5% |
| Rate Limiting | 11.9% |
| TLS | 17.1% |
WAF adoption is 92.6%, just below the global 93.1%. JavaScript rendering is required at 42.5% of sites versus a global 41.3%. Antibot (20.2%), CAPTCHA (23.2%), rate limiting (11.9%), and TLS (17.1%) are all near global benchmarks.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Spain's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.6% |
| Antibot | 20.2% |
| CAPTCHA | 23.2% |
| JavaScript | 42.5% |
| Rate Limiting | 11.9% |
| TLS | 17.1% |
| Has robots.txt | 81.2% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 14.3% |
WAF adoption stands at 92.6%. Among secondary barriers, JavaScript leads at 42.5%, slightly above the global 41.3%. CAPTCHA is the second-highest secondary barrier at 23.2%.
Most Spanish sites carry at least two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 5% |
| 1 barrier | 29.8% |
| 2 barriers | 35.6% |
| 3 barriers | 17.4% |
| 4 barriers | 7.5% |
| 5 barriers | 4.6% |
| 6 barriers | 0.3% |
5.0% of Spanish sites carry no barriers. The modal count is two barriers, at 35.6% of sites. Sites with three or more barriers account for 29.8% combined.
Most Spanish sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.6 |
The median recommended retrieval tier is 1, indicating that over half of sites are accessible via plain HTTP. The mean tier is 1.64.
Most Spanish sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 51.3% |
| 2 - Easy | 36.8% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.2% |
| 4 - Complex | 2% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.7% |
Tier 1 accounts for 51.3% of sites and Tier 2 for 36.8%, giving a combined Tier 1–2 rate of 88.1%. Tier 3 covers 9.2%, Tier 4 2.0%, and Tier 5 0.7%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Spain's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 16% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.8% |
| SEO audit tools | 15.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.2% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.9% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5.4% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.6% |
Across all 1,111 Spanish sites, 16.0% name at least one AI crawler. SEO audit tools are named by 15.1% and SEO / search indexing bots by 12.8%.
Uniform rules are Spain's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 43.3% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.9% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.3% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.6% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.4% |
18.8% of Spanish sites have no robots.txt. Among the rest, uniform per-agent rules account for 43.3%, path-level mixed rules for 32.9%, mixed-AI posture for 2.6%, and blanket Disallow: / for 2.4%.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Spain's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.3% | 2% |
| CCBot | 8.8% | 0.8% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.5% | 1% |
| Google-Extended | 8.1% | 1.2% |
| Bytespider | 7.1% | 0.3% |
| meta-externalagent | 3.2% | 0.2% |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.2% | 2.5% |
| PerplexityBot | 6% | 2% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.7% | 0.5% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.4% | 2.1% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.7% | 0.6% |
GPTBot appears in a Disallow rule on 11.3% of all Spanish sites. ChatGPT-User is the most explicitly allowed, appearing in an Allow rule on 2.5% of all sites.
Six Spanish sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Food & Beverages | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| Automotive | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Consulting | 90% |
| Foreign Language | 90% |
| General | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Food & Beverages, Retail, and Visual Art all reach 100% — every site in each sector names at least one bot to restrict in a Disallow rule.
Spain's Automotive sector leads in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Automotive | 90% |
| Restaurants | 80% |
| Airlines | 70% |
| Oil & Gas | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Sports | 70% |
| Veterinary | 70% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Investment | 60% |
| Non-Profit | 60% |
Automotive is the top-ranked sector, with 90.0% of sites naming at least one bot to allow in an Allow rule. Restaurants follow at 80.0%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is Spain's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 50% | 50% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 30% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 20% | 90% | 30% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 30% | 30% | 70% | 30% | 20% | 40% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 30% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 50% | 10% | 50% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 0% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 60% | 60% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 0% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 0% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury records the highest mean recommended tier at 2.90. Hospitality (2.70) follows, then Beauty & Cosmetics, Furniture, and Consumer Electronics all share a mean tier of 2.50.
Customer Services and Events are Spain's most accessible sectors to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machinery | 90% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 0% | 0% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Crafts | 100% | 20% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Education | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Import & Export | 100% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 0% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 90% | 20% | 30% | 50% | 0% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Public Safety | 100% | 20% | 40% | 70% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Veterinary | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 80% | 10% | 30% | 60% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 30% | 50% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Events | 90% | 10% | 10% | 80% | 30% | 0% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
Customer Services and Events Services both record a mean recommended tier of 1.80 — the lowest in the bottom-industries list for Spain.