Overview
JavaScript and CAPTCHA both elevate Beauty & Cosmetics's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 91% |
| Antibot | 30% |
| CAPTCHA | 36% |
| JavaScript | 40% |
| Rate Limiting | 31% |
| TLS | 30% |
WAF leads at 91%. JavaScript (40%) and CAPTCHA (36%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Beauty & Cosmetics at 91% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 91% |
| Antibot | 30% |
| CAPTCHA | 36% |
| JavaScript | 40% |
| Rate Limiting | 31% |
| TLS | 30% |
| Has robots.txt | 76% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13% |
WAF dominates at 91%. JavaScript (40%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by CAPTCHA (36%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 31% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Heavy barrier stacking is common in Beauty & Cosmetics — most sites carry three or more
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4% |
| 1 barrier | 20% |
| 2 barriers | 27% |
| 3 barriers | 30% |
| 4 barriers | 3% |
| 5 barriers | 14% |
| 6 barriers | 2% |
49% of Beauty & Cosmetics sites carry three or more barriers — well above the norm. Three-barrier stacks are most common. Just 4% of sites carry none.
Beauty & Cosmetics is predominantly Easy to access — with a notable Moderate minority
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.98 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.98 and a median of Easy place Beauty & Cosmetics around the middle of the sectors surveyed. 27% of sites are Simple to access; 23% require Moderate or above.
Easy is the most common access tier across Beauty & Cosmetics sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 27.3% |
| 2 - Easy | 49.5% |
| 3 - Moderate | 21.2% |
| 4 - Complex | 2% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Easy (50%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 77% of sites, while 21% land at Moderate and 2% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Around three-quarters of Beauty & Cosmetics sites publish a robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 76% |
76% of Beauty & Cosmetics sites have a valid robots.txt. The remaining 24% leave crawl policy entirely undefined — a meaningful gap for a sector of this scale.
A large minority of Beauty & Cosmetics sites maintain exhaustive bot agent lists
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 25% |
| 1 | 25% |
| 2–4 | 13% |
| 5–9 | 19% |
| 10–15 | 7% |
| 16+ | 11% |
A mean of 37 named agents is driven by a cohort of sites with comprehensive robots.txt policies. 11% name 16 or more agents. The median stays at 1, meaning most sites are sparse but the outliers are extensive.
SEO audit tools lead Beauty & Cosmetics's robots.txt mentions ahead of AI crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 19% |
| SEO / search indexing | 22% |
| SEO audit tools | 27% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8% |
| Social / content scrapers | 2% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 11% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
SEO audit tools are mentioned by 27% of Beauty & Cosmetics sites — the leading bot category, ahead of AI crawlers at 19%. Figures are percentages of all 100 sites surveyed.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Beauty & Cosmetics robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 44% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 31% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 0% |
| Mixed AI posture | 1% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 1% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 44%, with path-level mixed rules at 31%. Mixed AI posture (1%) and blanket Disallow (1%) are minimal.
AhrefsBot leads named Disallow rules in Beauty & Cosmetics robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 73% | 30% |
| bingbot | 10% | 10% |
| AhrefsBot | 18% | — |
| AdsBot-Google | 3% | 15% |
| MJ12bot | 16% | 1% |
| Nutch | 17% | — |
| Googlebot | 12% | 4% |
| MegaIndex.ru | 11% | 4% |
| CriteoBot/0.1 | 6% | 6% |
| TurnitinBot | 12% | — |
| msnbot | 6% | 6% |
| Mediapartners-Google | 3% | 8% |
| AhrefsSiteAudit | 11% | — |
| adsbot-google | 11% | — |
| BLEXBot | 10% | — |
| CCBot | 10% | — |
| GPTBot | 9% | 1% |
| PerplexityBot | 8% | 2% |
| AdsBot-Google-Mobile | 2% | 8% |
| Offline Explorer | 9% | — |
| SiteSnagger | 9% | — |
| Teleport | 9% | — |
| WebCopier | 9% | — |
| WebStripper | 9% | — |
| ia_archiver | 9% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Beauty & Cosmetics sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 73% Disallow. Among named agents, AhrefsBot, Nutch, MJ12bot are the most frequently targeted — focused on non-AI crawlers.
Industry Cohort
Beauty & Cosmetics sits mid-table within the Retail & E-commerce cohort
| 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 |
Across Retail & E-commerce, Beauty & Cosmetics's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 91%, JavaScript at 40%, and AI blocking at 13% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.87) is below the group average.