Overview
Icelandic sites run Antibot above the global rate as a secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.6% |
| Antibot | 21.2% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.7% |
| JavaScript | 43.6% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.1% |
| TLS | 17.7% |
WAF adoption is 93.6%, above the global 93.1%. Antibot (21.2%) and JavaScript (43.6%) both exceed their global benchmarks of 20.2% and 41.3%. CAPTCHA (22.7%), rate limiting (13.1%), and TLS (17.7%) are at or near global levels.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Iceland's active secondary barriers
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.6% |
| Antibot | 21.2% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.7% |
| JavaScript | 43.6% |
| Rate Limiting | 13.1% |
| TLS | 17.7% |
| Has robots.txt | 80.4% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.3% |
WAF is present on 93.6% of Icelandic sites. Among secondary barriers, JavaScript (43.6%) and antibot (21.2%) rank first and second, both above their respective global averages.
Most Icelandic sites carry two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.3% |
| 1 barrier | 28.6% |
| 2 barriers | 35.3% |
| 3 barriers | 19.4% |
| 4 barriers | 8% |
| 5 barriers | 4.1% |
| 6 barriers | 0.4% |
35.3% of sites carry exactly two barriers — the modal count. Single-barrier sites account for 28.6%; 4.3% have none. 31.9% deploy three or more barriers.
Most Icelandic sites need Easy-tier access to retrieve content
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
The browser-based median tier is 2, meaning fewer than half of sites resolve at Tier 1. The mean tier is 1.67.
Most Icelandic sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 49.7% |
| 2 - Easy | 37.6% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.6% |
| 4 - Complex | 2.3% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.7% |
Tier 1 accounts for 49.7% and Tier 2 for 37.6%, giving a combined 87.3%. Tier 3 holds 9.6%, Tier 4 2.3%, and Tier 5 0.7%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Iceland's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.2% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.2% |
| SEO audit tools | 13.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.1% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.9% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
Across all 1,079 Icelandic sites, 15.2% name at least one AI crawler, 13.1% name an SEO audit tool, and 12.2% name an SEO or search-indexing bot. Commercial scrapers appear on 8.0% of sites.
Uniform rules are Iceland's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 40.7% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 35.4% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 1.5% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.7% |
19.6% of sites have no robots.txt. Among those with one, the leading posture is uniform per-agent rules (40.7%), followed by path-level mixed rules (35.4%). Blanket Disallow: / covers 2.7% and mixed-AI posture 2.0%.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Iceland's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 10.8% | 2.1% |
| CCBot | 8.4% | 0.7% |
| ClaudeBot | 7.8% | 0.9% |
| Google-Extended | 7.9% | 1.1% |
| Bytespider | 6.3% | 0.2% |
| meta-externalagent | 2.5% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.7% | 2.5% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.6% | 1.8% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.4% | 0.5% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.3% | 2% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.7% | 0.6% |
GPTBot is named in a Disallow rule on 10.8% of all Icelandic sites. ChatGPT-User receives an explicit Allow on 2.5% of sites — the highest allow rate of any AI agent.
Four Icelandic sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Medical Devices | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Automotive | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Computer & Video Games | 90% |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% |
| Food & Beverages | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Investment | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
| Newspapers | 90% |
| Oil & Gas | 90% |
Design, Entertainment, Medical Devices, and Visual Art each reach 100%: every site in those sectors names at least one bot to restrict in a Disallow rule.
Iceland's Automotive and Ceramics & Pottery sites lead in allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Automotive | 80% |
| Ceramics & Pottery | 80% |
| Airlines | 70% |
| Insurance | 70% |
| Oil & Gas | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Market Research | 63.6% |
| Comics & Animation | 60% |
| Construction | 60% |
| Consulting | 60% |
| Education | 60% |
| Investment | 60% |
| Mental Health | 60% |
Automotive and Ceramics & Pottery both reach 80% — the highest explicit allow rate in Iceland — meaning that share of sites in each sector names at least one bot to allow. Six further sectors reach 70% or 63.6%.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is Iceland's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 50% | 60% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 40% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 50% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 50% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 100% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 60% | 30% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 80% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 70% | 50% | 60% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 50% | 20% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 0% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 90% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 20% | 0% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Events | 90% | 0% | 0% | 80% | 50% | 0% | 40% | 0% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury records the highest mean tier at 2.80. Computer Hardware follows at 2.75, with Furniture, Hospitality, and Real Estate all at 2.70.
Eight Icelandic sectors share the most accessible tier floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 50% | 40% | 60% | 30% | 0% | 90% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Education | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 80% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 20% | 10% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 50% | 50% | 40% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 80% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Adult | 100% | 40% | 30% | 80% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computers & Electronics | 90% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 0% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 90% | 10% | 20% | 40% | 0% | 40% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Music | 100% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 30% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Renewable Energy | 90% | 10% | 10% | 60% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 90% | 10% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Adult, Computers & Electronics, Manufacturing, Music, Renewable Energy, Sporting Goods, Visual Art, and Wholesalers all record a mean tier of 1.90 — the lowest in the bottom-industry group.