Overview
French sites carry slightly fewer secondary barriers than global norms
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.3% |
| Antibot | 19.7% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.7% |
| JavaScript | 41.4% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.1% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
Four barriers fall below the global benchmark — WAF (92.3%), Antibot (19.7%), CAPTCHA (22.7%), and Rate Limiting (12.1%). JavaScript (41.4%) and TLS (18.3%) edge slightly above. The radar shape shows a mild overall deflation from the global norm.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops France's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 92.3% |
| Antibot | 19.7% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.7% |
| JavaScript | 41.4% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.1% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
| Has robots.txt | 79.7% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 12.6% |
WAF (92.3%) leads. Among the secondary barriers, JavaScript (41.4%) is highest, followed by CAPTCHA (22.7%), which sits clearly ahead of Antibot (19.7%). TLS (18.3%) and Rate Limiting (12.1%) follow.
Most French sites carry at least two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 5.4% |
| 1 barrier | 30.1% |
| 2 barriers | 34.1% |
| 3 barriers | 18.5% |
| 4 barriers | 7.4% |
| 5 barriers | 4.2% |
| 6 barriers | 0.4% |
5.4% of French sites present no detectable barriers. The modal outcome is two barriers (34.1%), with 35.5% of sites at zero or one. Sites at three or more account for 30.5%.
Most French sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.6 |
A median of 1 confirms more than half of French sites are accessible via plain HTTP. Mean of 1.64. Tier 3 or above accounts for 11.5%.
Most French sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 50.7% |
| 2 - Easy | 37.8% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.2% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.7% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.6% |
Tier 1 and Tier 2 (37.8%) together cover 88.5% of the market. Tier 3 (9.2%) is modest; Tier 4 (1.7%) and Tier 5 (0.6%) are minimal. The Tier 1 majority means most French sites are accessible without browser rendering or active bot management.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top France's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 14.9% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.6% |
| SEO audit tools | 13.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7.6% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.6% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5.3% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
14.9% of all 1,111 French sites name at least one AI crawler. SEO audit tools (13.1%) and SEO/search indexers (12.6%) follow closely. Commercial scrapers reach 7.6%; archive/research bots 5.3%. Monitoring bots (0.5%) are practically absent from public declarations.
Uniform rules are France's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 42% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.9% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.2% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.3% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.4% |
20.3% of sites publish no robots.txt. Uniform posture (42.0%) leads, ahead of path-mixed (32.9%). The Mixed-AI share (2.3%) shows a subset of sites applying different rules to different AI agents.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in France's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 10.4% | 2.2% |
| CCBot | 8% | 0.8% |
| ClaudeBot | 7.4% | 1.1% |
| Google-Extended | 7.6% | 1.2% |
| Bytespider | 6.5% | 0.3% |
| meta-externalagent | 3.2% | 0.3% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.7% | 2.6% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.5% | 2% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.5% | 0.4% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3.7% | 2% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.6% | 0.9% |
Values are percentages of all 1,111 French sites. ChatGPT-User (2.6%) receives the highest explicit allow rate of any agent in this chart. PerplexityBot and OAI-SearchBot both receive 2.0% explicit allows.
Five French 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% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Crafts | 90% |
| Food & Beverages | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Machinery | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
| Newspapers | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Retail, and Visual Art all show 100% — every sampled site in each sector names at least one crawler in a Disallow rule. Newspapers and Machinery both follow at 90%, a notable pairing of content and industrial publishing.
France's Science and Wellness sectors lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Science | 80% |
| Wellness | 80% |
| Automotive | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Sporting Goods | 70% |
| Airlines | 60% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Crafts | 60% |
| Facilities Services | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Healthcare | 60% |
| Non-Profit | 60% |
| Plastics & Polymers | 60% |
Science (80%) and Wellness (80%) lead the allow list. Automotive (70%) appears here but does not feature in the top-15 Disallow chart — it is allow-tilted overall.
Industry Patterns
Computer Hardware is France's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 30% | 40% | 90% | 50% | 10% | 70% | 30% | Tier 3 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 100% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 20% | 10% | 40% | 20% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 60% | 60% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 30% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 0% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Airlines | 90% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
Computer Hardware (2.85) leads, ahead of Hospitality (2.70) and Jewellery & Luxury (2.70) which share second place. Real Estate (2.50) follows. A cluster of five sectors — Food & Beverages, Furniture, Beauty & Cosmetics, Consumer Electronics, and Human Resources — all sit at 2.30.
Advertising & Marketing is France's most accessible sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machinery | 90% | 0% | 10% | 60% | 0% | 0% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Printing | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 10% | 100% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 30% | 20% | 80% | 50% | 30% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 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 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 50% | 60% | 40% | 0% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 60% | 30% | 50% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Wine & Spirits | 100% | 20% | 0% | 50% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Advertising & Mktg | 100% | 20% | 50% | 40% | 0% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computers & Electronics | 90% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Advertising & Marketing, Computers & Electronics, and Equipment & Supplies share the 1.80 floor. Wine & Spirits (1.90) sits one level above, alongside Crafts, Manufacturing, Recruitment & Staffing, Reference, and Visual Art.