Overview
Rate Limiting and JavaScript both elevate Apparel & Fashion's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 91% |
| Antibot | 21% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 49% |
| Rate Limiting | 54% |
| TLS | 32% |
WAF leads at 91%. Rate Limiting (54%) and JavaScript (49%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
Rate Limiting and JavaScript define Apparel & Fashion's layered active defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 91% |
| Antibot | 21% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 49% |
| Rate Limiting | 54% |
| TLS | 32% |
| Has robots.txt | 69% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 4% |
WAF leads at 91%. Rate Limiting (54%) and JavaScript (49%) are both well above the cross-sector norm, giving Apparel & Fashion a markedly heavier active barrier profile than most sectors.
Heavy barrier stacking is common in Apparel & Fashion — most sites carry three or more
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 2% |
| 1 barrier | 14% |
| 2 barriers | 26% |
| 3 barriers | 42% |
| 4 barriers | 10% |
| 5 barriers | 6% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
58% of Apparel & Fashion sites carry three or more barriers — well above the norm. Three-barrier stacks are most common. Just 2% of sites carry none.
Apparel & Fashion is among the hardest sectors to access programmatically
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 2.86 |
A mean recommended tier of 2.86 and a median of Moderate place Apparel & Fashion at the top of the sectors surveyed. 7% of sites are Simple to access; 57% require Moderate or above.
Easy is the most common access tier across Apparel & Fashion sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 7.1% |
| 2 - Easy | 35.7% |
| 3 - Moderate | 29.6% |
| 4 - Complex | 19.4% |
| 5 - Advanced | 8.2% |
Easy (36%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 43% of sites, while 30% land at Moderate and 28% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Around seven in ten of Apparel & Fashion sites publish a robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 69% |
69% of Apparel & Fashion sites have a valid robots.txt. The remaining 31% leave crawl policy entirely undefined — a meaningful gap for a sector of this scale.
Apparel & Fashion sites name a handful of agents in robots.txt — few commit to comprehensive policies
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 32% |
| 1 | 31% |
| 2–4 | 17% |
| 5–9 | 16% |
| 10–15 | 1% |
| 16+ | 3% |
The mean of 2.8 named agents reflects limited bot-policy investment in Apparel & Fashion. 32% of sites name no agents; 31% name exactly one. Only 3% maintain a list of 16 or more named bots.
SEO crawlers draw the most robots.txt attention in Apparel & Fashion
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 6% |
| SEO / search indexing | 16% |
| SEO audit tools | 14% |
| Commercial scrapers | 3% |
| Social / content scrapers | 4% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 3% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
SEO / search indexing bots are mentioned by 16% of Apparel & Fashion sites. AI crawlers follow at 6%. All figures are percentages of all 100 Apparel & Fashion sites surveyed.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Apparel & Fashion robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 34% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 33% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 1% |
| Mixed AI posture | 2% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 1% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 34%, with path-level mixed rules at 33%. Mixed AI posture (2%) and blanket Disallow (1%) are minimal.
Googlebot leads named Disallow rules in Apparel & Fashion robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 63% | 33% |
| Googlebot | 8% | 5% |
| PerplexityBot | 3% | 4% |
| Yandex | 5% | 1% |
| AhrefsBot | 5% | 1% |
| AhrefsSiteAudit | 5% | 1% |
| ClaudeBot | 3% | 2% |
| GPTBot | 3% | 2% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 2% | 3% |
| MJ12bot | 5% | — |
| Google-Extended | 3% | 1% |
| PetalBot | 4% | — |
| Pinterestbot | 3% | 1% |
| Twitterbot | 2% | 2% |
| Nutch | 4% | — |
| adsbot-google | 4% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 1% | 3% |
| Slurp | 3% | — |
| YandexBot | 2% | 1% |
| AdsBot-Google | 2% | 1% |
| Baiduspider | 3% | — |
| Download Ninja | 3% | — |
| Xenu | 3% | — |
| Amazonbot | 2% | — |
| Applebot | 1% | 1% |
Values are percentages of all 100 Apparel & Fashion sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 63% Disallow. Among named agents, Googlebot, Yandex, AhrefsBot are the most frequently targeted — focused on non-AI crawlers.
Industry Cohort
Apparel & Fashion is among the hardest sub-categories to access in Retail & E-commerce
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Fashion | 91% | 21% | 15% | 49% | 54% | 32% | 69% | 4% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 91% | 30% | 36% | 40% | 31% | 30% | 76% | 13% | Tier 2 |
| Computer & Video Games | 94% | 27% | 26% | 44% | 22% | 13% | 81% | 23% | Tier 1 |
| Computer Hardware | 93% | 30% | 20% | 42% | 33% | 15% | 73% | 13% | Tier 2 |
| Computers & Electronics | 86% | 13% | 17% | 34% | 18% | 15% | 73% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 92% | 27% | 27% | 46% | 29% | 20% | 83% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 96% | 27% | 31% | 41% | 26% | 14% | 68% | 8% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 92% | 24% | 26% | 51% | 31% | 11% | 68% | 23% | Tier 2 |
| Furniture | 97% | 33% | 28% | 49% | 40% | 21% | 67% | 5% | Tier 2 |
| Jewelry & Luxury | 83% | 28% | 23% | 41% | 42% | 34% | 80% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Packaging & Containers | 95% | 18% | 35% | 42% | 17% | 11% | 80% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Retail | 96% | 19% | 15% | 51% | 33% | 20% | 85% | 29% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 89% | 26% | 24% | 41% | 49% | 32% | 78% | 7% | Tier 2 |
| Sports | 98% | 11% | 15% | 61% | 23% | 11% | 89% | 33% | Tier 1 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 92% | 6% | 38% | 35% | 17% | 14% | 78% | 7% | Tier 1 |
| Tobacco | 98% | 30% | 52% | 38% | 30% | 15% | 76% | 3% | Tier 1 |
| Wholesalers & Liquidators | 94% | 24% | 22% | 44% | 30% | 13% | 80% | 7% | Tier 2 |
| Wine & Spirits | 95% | 24% | 28% | 47% | 32% | 15% | 84% | 14% | Tier 1 |
A median tier of Easy and mean of 2.54 make Apparel & Fashion one of the harder sectors within Retail & E-commerce to access programmatically. JavaScript (49%) is elevated in the cohort.