Overview
Gambling deploys the heaviest CAPTCHA and antibot profile in this batch
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 95% |
| Antibot | 31% |
| CAPTCHA | 24% |
| JavaScript | 53% |
| Rate Limiting | 35% |
| TLS | 14% |
CAPTCHA (24%) and antibot (31%) both lead this batch of five sectors, alongside a near-universal WAF (95%). Despite this, Gambling's JavaScript (53%) and Rate Limiting (35%) are elevated but not extreme, and tier difficulty is paradoxically low.
Barrier Landscape
Antibot and CAPTCHA lead Gambling's secondary barrier stack
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 95% |
| Antibot | 31% |
| CAPTCHA | 24% |
| JavaScript | 53% |
| Rate Limiting | 35% |
| TLS | 14% |
| Has robots.txt | 57% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 6% |
WAF covers 95% of Gambling sites. Antibot (31%) and CAPTCHA (24%) are the highest in this batch, suggesting active challenges targeted at human verification. JavaScript (53%) and Rate Limiting (35%) are also elevated.
Two-barrier stacks are most common across Gambling sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4% |
| 1 barrier | 24% |
| 2 barriers | 27% |
| 3 barriers | 21% |
| 4 barriers | 13% |
| 5 barriers | 7% |
| 6 barriers | 4% |
27% of Gambling sites carry two barriers — the modal count. Stacking is wide: 4% carry all six — the highest in this batch. 24% carry one and 4% carry none. Gambling shows a broader spread of barrier stacking than most sectors.
Despite heavy barriers, Gambling sites are overwhelmingly Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.44 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.44 and a median of Simple place Gambling toward the easier end of the sectors surveyed. 75% of sites are Simple to access; 12% require Moderate or above.
Four in five Gambling sites are Simple to access programmatically
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 75% |
| 2 - Easy | 13% |
| 3 - Moderate | 7% |
| 4 - Complex | 3% |
| 5 - Advanced | 2% |
Simple (75%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 88% of sites, while 7% land at Moderate and 5% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Nearly half of Gambling sites publish no robots.txt at all
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 57% |
Only 57% of Gambling sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 43% without a file leave crawl policy entirely undefined — among the lowest coverage rates of any sector in this batch.
Most Gambling sites name no bots or just one in robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 53% |
| 1 | 35% |
| 2–4 | 6% |
| 5–9 | 0% |
| 10–15 | 0% |
| 16+ | 6% |
53% of Gambling sites name zero bot agents; 35% name exactly one. The mean of 2.1 is among the lowest across sectors in this batch. Gambling's minimal named-agent policy contrasts with its heavy technical barrier deployment.
AI crawlers and SEO audit tools draw the most attention in Gambling robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 6% |
| SEO / search indexing | 2% |
| SEO audit tools | 4% |
| Commercial scrapers | 4% |
| Social / content scrapers | 1% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 2% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
AI crawlers are mentioned by 6% of Gambling sites — the leading category. SEO audit tools and commercial scrapers follow at 4% each. No category exceeds 6%, reflecting overall low engagement with named bot policy.
Uniform per-agent rules lead Gambling's sparse robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 35% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 20% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 2% |
| Mixed AI posture | 3% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Of the 57% of Gambling sites with robots.txt, uniform per-agent rules lead at 35%, with path-level mixed rules at 20%. A 3% mixed AI posture and zero blanket Disallow reflect low strategic engagement with AI-specific crawler policy.
Gambling robots.txt targets CCBot and ImagesiftBot alongside GPTBot
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 45% | 17% |
| CCBot | 5% | 2% |
| GPTBot | 4% | 3% |
| ImagesiftBot | 5% | 2% |
| AI2Bot | 4% | 2% |
| Amazonbot | 4% | 2% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4% | 2% |
| ClaudeBot | 4% | 2% |
| cohere-ai | 4% | 2% |
| Diffbot | 3% | 2% |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | 3% | 2% |
| Ai2Bot | 2% | 2% |
| Cincraw | 2% | 2% |
| FriendlyCrawler | 2% | 2% |
| PetalBot | 2% | 2% |
| Semanticbot | 2% | 2% |
| TimpiBot | 2% | 2% |
| VelenPublicWebCrawler | 2% | 2% |
| Yandex | 2% | 2% |
| googlebot-news | 2% | 2% |
| img2dataset | 2% | 2% |
| Bytespider | 3% | — |
| FacebookBot | 3% | — |
| Omgilibot | 3% | — |
| DuckAssistBot | 2% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Gambling sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 45% Disallow. Among named agents, CCBot and ImagesiftBot (5% Disallow each) appear alongside GPTBot and AI2Bot (4% Disallow each) — a different AI-blocking profile from most sectors.
Industry Cohort
Gambling leads the Entertainment cohort on CAPTCHA and antibot but not on tier difficulty
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 98% | 36% | 33% | 36% | 34% | 20% | 85% | 9% | Tier 1 |
| Entertainment | 92% | 17% | 18% | 46% | 23% | 13% | 77% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Gambling | 95% | 31% | 24% | 53% | 35% | 14% | 57% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Music | 96% | 21% | 19% | 52% | 26% | 12% | 84% | 25% | Tier 2 |
| TV & Movies | 99% | 30% | 25% | 59% | 33% | 13% | 70% | 11% | Tier 1 |
Gambling's CAPTCHA (24%) and antibot (31%) rates lead the Entertainment cohort. WAF (95%) is also at the top. Despite this, Gambling's mean tier of 1.32 is among the cohort's lowest — its barriers appear oriented toward compliance and human verification rather than programmatic access control.