Overview
CAPTCHA leads Antibot by a wide margin among secondary barriers
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.5% |
| Antibot | 14.4% |
| CAPTCHA | 25.3% |
| JavaScript | 34.9% |
| Rate Limiting | 10.4% |
| TLS | 14.4% |
WAF covers 93.5% of sites. Among secondary barriers, JavaScript reaches 34.9% and CAPTCHA 25.3%. Antibot and TLS are tied at 14.4% — an unusual alignment at the lower end of the barrier profile.
Barrier Landscape
Antibot and TLS are tied at the floor of secondary barrier adoption
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93.5% |
| Antibot | 14.4% |
| CAPTCHA | 25.3% |
| JavaScript | 34.9% |
| Rate Limiting | 10.4% |
| TLS | 14.4% |
| Has robots.txt | 79% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 16.3% |
WAF dominates at 93.5%. JavaScript is the leading secondary barrier at 34.9%, followed by CAPTCHA at 25.3%. Rate Limiting (10.4%) trails, while Antibot and TLS share the lowest rate at 14.4% apiece.
Single-barrier sites are the most common configuration
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 5.7% |
| 1 barrier | 35.7% |
| 2 barriers | 33.5% |
| 3 barriers | 14.7% |
| 4 barriers | 5.7% |
| 5 barriers | 4.6% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
35.7% of sites deploy exactly one barrier, the modal outcome. Two-barrier sites follow at 33.5%. Zero-barrier sites account for 5.7%. No site in Nauru carries all six barriers simultaneously.
Most Nauru sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.4 |
The median recommended tier is 1 and the mean is 1.4. 67.0% of sites sit at Tier 1, with no sites at Tier 5 — indicating that the full accessible spectrum does not extend to the most demanding retrieval tier.
Most Nauru sites are Simple to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 67% |
| 2 - Easy | 27.2% |
| 3 - Moderate | 4.6% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.1% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Tier 1 accounts for 67.0% of Nauru sites and Tier 2 for a further 27.2%, giving a combined 94.2%. Tier 3 adds 4.6% and Tier 4 just 1.1%. No sites require Tier 5 retrieval.
robots.txt
SEO audit tools top the bot mention rankings in Nauru
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 18.5% |
| SEO / search indexing | 14.4% |
| SEO audit tools | 20.2% |
| Commercial scrapers | 9% |
| Social / content scrapers | 9% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5.7% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.8% |
SEO audit tools are named in robots.txt by 20.2% of all Nauru sites, ahead of AI crawlers at 18.5%. SEO/search indexing follows at 14.4%. Commercial and social scrapers each reach 9.0%, and archive/research crawlers 5.7%.
Blanket Disallow is the most common posture in Nauru
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 39.5% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 30.5% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 3.3% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.7% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 5.2% |
39.5% of sites apply uniform per-agent rules and 30.5% use path-level mixed rules. Blanket Disallow: / applies to 5.2% of all sites — the highest rate in this posture breakdown. Allow-only postures cover 3.3%.
GPTBot and Google-Extended are the most blocked agents
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 13.1% | 2.7% |
| CCBot | 9.8% | 0.8% |
| ClaudeBot | 11.2% | 0.8% |
| Google-Extended | 12% | 0.5% |
| Bytespider | 10.1% | 0.5% |
| meta-externalagent | 4.9% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.8% | 3% |
| PerplexityBot | 8.7% | 2.7% |
| Applebot-Extended | 7.4% | 0.3% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.9% | 2.7% |
| anthropic-ai | 4.9% | 0.3% |
GPTBot carries a Disallow rule on 13.1% of all sites; Google-Extended follows at 12.0% and ClaudeBot at 11.2%. On the allow side, ChatGPT-User leads at 3.0%, followed by GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot at 2.7% each.
Consumer Electronics and Retail sites all block every named bot
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Consumer Electronics | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
| Newspapers | 90% |
| Online Services | 90% |
| Photography | 83.3% |
| Adult | 80% |
| Real Estate | 80% |
| Sporting Goods | 80% |
| Telecom | 80% |
| Transport & Logistics | 80% |
| Advertising & Mktg | 77.8% |
| Travel & Tourism | 77.8% |
Every site in Consumer Electronics and Retail names at least one bot in a Disallow rule. Apparel & Fashion, General, Mass Media, Newspapers, and Online Services follow at 90%. Photography also appears at 83.3% — and leads the Allow chart at the same rate.
Photography leads sectors on explicit bot Allow rules
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Photography | 83.3% |
| Retail | 80% |
| Sports | 70% |
| Advertising & Mktg | 66.7% |
| Publishing | 60% |
| Consumer Electronics | 57.1% |
| Design | 57.1% |
| Adult | 50% |
| General | 50% |
| Mass Media | 50% |
| Online Services | 50% |
| Software & Dev | 50% |
| Transport & Logistics | 50% |
| Airlines | 42.9% |
| Distance Learning | 40% |
Photography tops this ranking with 83.3% of its sites naming at least one bot in an Allow rule — the same sector also names bots to restrict at 83.3%. Retail follows at 80.0%, and Sports at 70.0%.
Industry Patterns
Libraries is the hardest sector to access programmatically in Nauru
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libraries | 100% | 40% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Adult | 100% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 20% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 30% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Photography | 83.3% | 33.3% | 33.3% | 16.7% | 33.3% | 83.3% | 83.3% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Science | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 0% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Publishing | 90% | 40% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 20% | 70% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Distance Learning | 100% | 10% | 0% | 0% | 10% | 0% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Government | 80% | 30% | 30% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 60% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 100% | 0% | 42.9% | 42.9% | 14.3% | 0% | 100% | 28.6% | Tier 1 |
| Airlines | 85.7% | 28.6% | 14.3% | 42.9% | 0% | 0% | 71.4% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| General | 100% | 0% | 50% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 40% | Tier 1 |
| Mass Media | 100% | 0% | 50% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 40% | Tier 1 |
| Online Services | 100% | 0% | 50% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 40% | Tier 1 |
| Travel & Tourism | 88.9% | 22.2% | 22.2% | 33.3% | 11.1% | 11.1% | 88.9% | 11.1% | Tier 1 |
| Computer & Video Games | 100% | 0% | 0% | 50% | 0% | 0% | 80% | 10% | Tier 1 |
Libraries leads the top-15 ranking with a mean recommended tier of 2.20. Adult and Retail follow at 2.10. Eight sectors carry a median tier of 2 and seven carry a median of 1 — a wide spread across difficulty levels.
Four sectors share Nauru's most accessible mean tier
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance | 80% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 1 |
| Newspapers | 90% | 10% | 30% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 60% | Tier 1 |
| Wellness | 100% | 16.7% | 33.3% | 33.3% | 16.7% | 16.7% | 100% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| Software & Dev | 70% | 30% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 1 |
| Education | 90% | 10% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 0% | 70% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| Entertainment | 100% | 10% | 50% | 70% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 30% | Tier 1 |
| Sporting Goods | 100% | 0% | 40% | 80% | 20% | 0% | 100% | 10% | Tier 1 |
| Sports | 100% | 0% | 0% | 50% | 0% | 10% | 80% | 20% | Tier 1 |
| Design | 100% | 14.3% | 14.3% | 14.3% | 0% | 28.6% | 85.7% | 42.9% | Tier 1 |
| Banking | 87.5% | 12.5% | 12.5% | 12.5% | 12.5% | 12.5% | 50% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| Healthcare | 100% | 11.1% | 33.3% | 22.2% | 0% | 0% | 77.8% | 11.1% | Tier 1 |
| IT Services | 90% | 0% | 10% | 30% | 0% | 10% | 60% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| Maritime | 90% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 1 |
| Real Estate | 80% | 0% | 40% | 20% | 0% | 0% | 80% | 0% | Tier 1 |
| Telecom | 90% | 0% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 80% | 20% | Tier 1 |
The lowest mean recommended tier in the bottom 15 is 1.20, shared by IT Services, Maritime, Real Estate, and Telecom. All sectors in this group carry a median tier of 1, placing the majority of their sites at the simplest retrieval level.