Overview
JavaScript and Antibot both elevate Finance's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 88% |
| Antibot | 27% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 36% |
| Rate Limiting | 22% |
| TLS | 16% |
WAF leads at 88%. JavaScript (36%) and Antibot (27%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Finance at 88% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 88% |
| Antibot | 27% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 36% |
| Rate Limiting | 22% |
| TLS | 16% |
| Has robots.txt | 82% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13% |
WAF dominates at 88%. JavaScript (36%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by Antibot (27%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 22% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Two-barrier stacks are Finance's most common security posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 7% |
| 1 barrier | 30% |
| 2 barriers | 32% |
| 3 barriers | 22% |
| 4 barriers | 1% |
| 5 barriers | 8% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
32% of Finance sites carry exactly 2 barriers. 31% stack three or more. 7% carry none — a low share of unprotected sites for this sector.
Finance is predominantly Easy to access — with a notable Moderate minority
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.76 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.76 and a median of Easy place Finance around the middle of the sectors surveyed. 47% of sites are Simple to access; 17% require Moderate or above.
Simple and Easy cover most Finance sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 47% |
| 2 - Easy | 36% |
| 3 - Moderate | 11% |
| 4 - Complex | 6% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (47%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 83% of sites, while 11% land at Moderate and 6% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Finance sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 82% |
82% of Finance 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%.
Finance sites name a handful of agents in robots.txt — few commit to comprehensive policies
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 24% |
| 1 | 39% |
| 2–4 | 17% |
| 5–9 | 6% |
| 10–15 | 2% |
| 16+ | 12% |
The mean of 7.2 named agents reflects limited bot-policy investment in Finance. 24% of sites name no agents; 39% name exactly one. Only 12% maintain a list of 16 or more named bots.
AI crawlers and SEO / search indexing draw near-equal attention in Finance robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 14% |
| SEO / search indexing | 11% |
| SEO audit tools | 10% |
| Commercial scrapers | 7% |
| Social / content scrapers | 4% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 7% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
AI crawlers appears in 14% of Finance sites; SEO / search indexing in 11%. The near-equal split reflects a sector that treats both categories with comparable priority. Figures are percentages of all 100 sites.
Path-level mixed rules dominate Finance robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 31% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 48% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 2% |
| Mixed AI posture | 4% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Path-level mixed rules lead at 48%, with uniform per-agent rules at 31%. Mixed AI posture reaches 4%.
AI crawlers are among the most-targeted agents in Finance robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 74% | 50% |
| PerplexityBot | 9% | 4% |
| ClaudeBot | 9% | 2% |
| Google-Extended | 9% | 2% |
| CCBot | 9% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 5% | 4% |
| Googlebot-News | 5% | 4% |
| Yandex | 6% | 3% |
| Claude-Web | 7% | 1% |
| GPTBot | 6% | 2% |
| anthropic-ai | 7% | 1% |
| cohere-ai | 6% | 1% |
| Googlebot | 4% | 3% |
| Bytespider | 6% | — |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3% | 3% |
| FacebookBot | 5% | — |
| YouBot | 3% | 2% |
| magpie-crawler | 5% | — |
| omgili | 5% | — |
| omgilibot | 5% | — |
| ia_archiver | 5% | — |
| MJ12bot | 5% | — |
| Applebot-Extended | 4% | 1% |
| Baiduspider | 3% | 2% |
| Diffbot | 4% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Finance sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 74% Disallow. Among named agents, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, and CCBot share the top Disallow position at 9% each.
Industry Cohort
Finance leads the Financial Services cohort on AI-blocking policy
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accounting & Auditing | 93% | 15% | 13% | 40% | 8% | 10% | 63% | 1% | Tier 1 |
| Banking | 86% | 19% | 10% | 36% | 12% | 11% | 72% | 4% | Tier 2 |
| Finance | 88% | 27% | 15% | 36% | 22% | 16% | 82% | 13% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 86% | 26% | 19% | 37% | 17% | 13% | 71% | 3% | Tier 2 |
| Investment | 94% | 23% | 14% | 41% | 19% | 9% | 76% | 5% | Tier 1 |
| Venture Capital | 92% | 15% | 14% | 33% | 20% | 15% | 79% | 2% | Tier 1 |
Finance's 13% AI-blocking rate in robots.txt is the highest in the Financial Services cohort. WAF (88%) and JavaScript (36%) sit mid-table in the cohort on technical barriers.