Overview
JavaScript is the US's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.2% |
| Antibot | 23% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 43.7% |
| Rate Limiting | 14.9% |
| TLS | 18.9% |
WAF covers 93.2% of US sites — near-universal. JavaScript (43.7%) leads secondary barriers by a clear margin, sitting 20 points above Antibot (23.0%) and CAPTCHA (22.3%). Rate Limiting (14.9%) and TLS (18.9%) are present but modest.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops US active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.2% |
| Antibot | 23% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.3% |
| JavaScript | 43.7% |
| Rate Limiting | 14.9% |
| TLS | 18.9% |
| Has robots.txt | 79.4% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.2% |
WAF covers 93.2% of US sites. JavaScript (43.7%) leads secondary barriers by a wide margin. Antibot (23.0%) and CAPTCHA (22.3%) are closely matched. TLS (18.9%) and Rate Limiting (14.9%) fill the lower positions.
Most US sites carry at least two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.1% |
| 1 barrier | 28.1% |
| 2 barriers | 34.5% |
| 3 barriers | 19% |
| 4 barriers | 10% |
| 5 barriers | 3.9% |
| 6 barriers | 0.5% |
34.5% of US sites carry exactly two barriers — the most common count. Sites at three or more total 33.4%, including 10.0% at four and 3.9% at five. Only 4.1% have no barriers at all.
Most US sites need JavaScript rendering to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
The browser median is Tier 2 — JavaScript rendering. Tier 1 (plain HTTP) covers 45.7%, keeping the mean at 1.71. Tiers 3–5 account for 13.4% of sites.
Most US sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 45.7% |
| 2 - Easy | 40.8% |
| 3 - Moderate | 10.6% |
| 4 - Complex | 2.1% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.8% |
Tier 1 (45.7%) and Tier 2 (40.8%) together cover 86.5% of US sites. Tier 3 is the main difficult tier at 10.6%. Tiers 4 and 5 add another 2.9%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top US robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 14.7% |
| SEO / search indexing | 11.3% |
| SEO audit tools | 13.2% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7.7% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.4% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.1% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
AI crawlers are named in robots.txt by 14.7% of all U.S. sites, SEO audit tools by 13.2%, and SEO/search indexers by 11.3%. Commercial scrapers appear on 7.7% of sites; social and archive crawlers trail further behind.
Uniform rules are the most common US robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 42.7% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 30.9% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.9% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.3% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.8% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 42.7% of all US sites. Path-level mixed rules — where an agent gets different access for different paths — follow at 30.9%. Blanket Disallow: / accounts for 2.8%.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in US robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11% | 2.1% |
| CCBot | 8.3% | 1.1% |
| ClaudeBot | 7.8% | 0.9% |
| Google-Extended | 8% | 1.4% |
| Bytespider | 6.7% | 0.4% |
| meta-externalagent | 2.8% | 0.1% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.6% | 2.3% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.6% | 2.1% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.7% | 0.4% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.3% | 1.9% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.9% | 0.7% |
GPTBot appears in a Disallow rule on 11.0% of all US sites. ChatGPT-User holds the highest Allow rate at 2.3%, ahead of GPTBot (2.1%) and OAI-SearchBot (1.9%).
Seven US sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Newspapers | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Telecom | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Chemicals | 90% |
| Civil Engineering | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Fishery | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Insurance | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Newspapers, Retail, Telecom, and Visual Art all reach 100%: every site in each sector names at least one bot in a Disallow rule. Eight more sectors sit at 90%.
Seven US sectors lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Airlines | 70% |
| Architecture | 70% |
| Facilities Services | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Insurance | 60% |
| Investment | 60% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 60% |
| Software & Dev | 60% |
| Travel & Tourism | 60% |
| Automotive | 50% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 50% |
Airlines, Architecture, Facilities Services, Photography, Publishing, Retail, and Science each have 70% of their sites naming at least one bot in an Allow rule. Graphic Design, Insurance, Investment, Pharmaceuticals, Software & Dev, and Travel & Tourism follow at 60%.
Industry Patterns
Hospitality and Jewellery are the US's most demanding sectors for crawlers
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Real Estate | 90% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 0% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 40% | 30% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 30% | 10% | 50% | 30% | 0% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 90% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 40% | 0% | 60% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 70% | 60% | 40% | 40% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 80% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Both Hospitality and Jewellery & Luxury record a median retrieval tier of 3 and a mean of 2.70 — the highest in the country. Equipment & Supplies (mean 2.60) and Furniture and Real Estate (mean 2.50 each) are close behind.
Chemicals, Construction, and Crafts share the US's most accessible floor tier
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Fashion | 100% | 20% | 30% | 70% | 30% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 0% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 80% | 10% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Wholesalers | 80% | 30% | 30% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Recruitment & Staffing | 100% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 0% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 40% | 30% | 60% | 40% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Telecom | 90% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 0% | 30% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 100% | 10% | 30% | 40% | 0% | 10% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Pharmaceuticals | 80% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 10% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Chemicals | 80% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Construction | 90% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 0% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Crafts | 100% | 40% | 40% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
Chemicals, Construction & Maintenance, and Crafts all reach a mean retrieval tier of 1.90 — the lowest recorded across U.S. sectors. Pharmaceuticals sits just above at 1.95.