Overview
JavaScript and CAPTCHA both elevate Crafts's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 21% |
| CAPTCHA | 34% |
| JavaScript | 44% |
| Rate Limiting | 24% |
| TLS | 12% |
WAF leads at 98%. JavaScript (44%) and CAPTCHA (34%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Crafts at 98% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 21% |
| CAPTCHA | 34% |
| JavaScript | 44% |
| Rate Limiting | 24% |
| TLS | 12% |
| Has robots.txt | 82% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 18% |
WAF dominates at 98%. JavaScript (44%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by CAPTCHA (34%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 24% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Crafts's barrier counts are spread — no single configuration dominates
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 2% |
| 1 barrier | 31% |
| 2 barriers | 31% |
| 3 barriers | 17% |
| 4 barriers | 7% |
| 5 barriers | 11% |
| 6 barriers | 1% |
Barrier counts vary widely across Crafts sites. Single-barrier configurations are the modal count at 31%, but the distribution is broad. 36% of sites carry three or more.
Simple is the dominant access tier across Crafts
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.39 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.39 and a median of Simple place Crafts toward the easier end of the sectors surveyed. 69% of sites are Simple to access; 7% require Moderate or above.
Simple tier covers more than two-thirds of Crafts sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 69% |
| 2 - Easy | 24% |
| 3 - Moderate | 6% |
| 4 - Complex | 1% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (69%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 93% of sites, while 6% land at Moderate and 1% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Crafts sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 82% |
82% of Crafts sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 18% without a file leave crawl policy undefined — a lower gap than the cross-sector average of around 24%.
Crafts sites name a handful of agents in robots.txt — few commit to comprehensive policies
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 25% |
| 1 | 30% |
| 2–4 | 12% |
| 5–9 | 22% |
| 10–15 | 2% |
| 16+ | 9% |
The mean of 4.8 named agents reflects limited bot-policy investment in Crafts. 25% of sites name no agents; 30% name exactly one. Only 9% maintain a list of 16 or more named bots.
SEO audit tools lead Crafts's robots.txt mentions ahead of AI crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 18% |
| SEO / search indexing | 10% |
| SEO audit tools | 30% |
| Commercial scrapers | 5% |
| Social / content scrapers | 2% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 0% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
SEO audit tools are mentioned by 30% of Crafts sites — the leading bot category, ahead of AI crawlers at 18%. Figures are percentages of all 100 sites surveyed.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Crafts robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 57% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 24% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 1% |
| Mixed AI posture | 0% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 57%, with path-level mixed rules at 24%. Mixed AI posture (0%) and blanket Disallow (0%) are minimal.
AhrefsBot leads named Disallow rules in Crafts robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 73% | 25% |
| AhrefsBot | 25% | 1% |
| AhrefsSiteAudit | 14% | 1% |
| Nutch | 13% | — |
| adsbot-google | 13% | — |
| GPTBot | 12% | — |
| MJ12bot | 10% | — |
| SemrushBot | 9% | — |
| Bytespider | 8% | — |
| CCBot | 8% | — |
| ClaudeBot | 8% | — |
| Google-Extended | 7% | — |
| anthropic-ai | 7% | — |
| PetalBot | 7% | — |
| Applebot-Extended | 6% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 6% | — |
| Claude-Web | 6% | — |
| Googlebot | 4% | 2% |
| FacebookBot | 5% | — |
| PerplexityBot | 5% | — |
| Amazonbot | 5% | — |
| Baiduspider | 4% | 1% |
| rogerbot | 5% | — |
| Pinterestbot | 4% | 1% |
| Diffbot | 4% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Crafts sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 73% Disallow. Among named agents, AhrefsBot, AhrefsSiteAudit, Nutch are the most frequently targeted — focused on non-AI crawlers.
Industry Cohort
Crafts sits mid-table within the Design & Creative Arts cohort
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | 95% | 21% | 33% | 40% | 20% | 10% | 84% | 12% | Tier 1 |
| Ceramics & Pottery | 97% | 16% | 38% | 47% | 17% | 12% | 77% | 5% | Tier 1 |
| Comics & Animation | 93% | 15% | 28% | 34% | 10% | 7% | 77% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Crafts | 98% | 21% | 34% | 44% | 24% | 12% | 82% | 18% | Tier 1 |
| Design | 99% | 24% | 27% | 40% | 21% | 11% | 89% | 14% | Tier 1 |
| Graphic Design | 99% | 11% | 21% | 19% | 12% | 9% | 87% | 9% | Tier 1 |
| Performing Arts | 93% | 11% | 19% | 39% | 19% | 11% | 75% | 7% | Tier 1 |
| Photography | 95% | 19% | 28% | 42% | 42% | 32% | 68% | 15% | Tier 1 |
| Printing | 98% | 19% | 28% | 34% | 13% | 10% | 81% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Visual Art | 98% | 20% | 31% | 43% | 20% | 10% | 84% | 22% | Tier 1 |
Across Design & Creative Arts, Crafts's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 98%, JavaScript at 44%, and AI blocking at 18% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.36) is below the group average.