Overview
Graphic Design sites run almost entirely on WAF — secondary barriers are thin
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 99% |
| Antibot | 11% |
| CAPTCHA | 21% |
| JavaScript | 19% |
| Rate Limiting | 12% |
| TLS | 9% |
WAF at 99% dominates. No secondary barrier exceeds 21%, leaving Graphic Design with one of the narrowest active-barrier profiles across all surveyed sectors.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Graphic Design at 99% — CAPTCHA is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 99% |
| Antibot | 11% |
| CAPTCHA | 21% |
| JavaScript | 19% |
| Rate Limiting | 12% |
| TLS | 9% |
| Has robots.txt | 87% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 9% |
WAF dominates at 99%. CAPTCHA (21%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by JavaScript (19%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 12% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Single-barrier configurations dominate Graphic Design — mostly WAF alone
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 1% |
| 1 barrier | 56% |
| 2 barriers | 31% |
| 3 barriers | 3% |
| 4 barriers | 2% |
| 5 barriers | 6% |
| 6 barriers | 1% |
56% of Graphic Design sites carry exactly one barrier — almost always WAF. Two-barrier stacks add 31%. Just 12% of sites layer three or more defences.
Nearly all Graphic Design sites are Simple to access programmatically
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.04 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.04 and a median of Simple place Graphic Design among the most accessible sectors surveyed. 96% of sites are Simple to access; 0% require Moderate or above.
Almost all Graphic Design sites are Simple to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 96% |
| 2 - Easy | 4% |
| 3 - Moderate | 0% |
| 4 - Complex | 0% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (96%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 100% of sites, while 0% land at Moderate and 0% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Graphic Design sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 87% |
87% of Graphic Design sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 13% without a file leave crawl policy undefined — a lower gap than the cross-sector average of around 24%.
Graphic Design sites name a handful of agents in robots.txt — few commit to comprehensive policies
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 33% |
| 1 | 38% |
| 2–4 | 16% |
| 5–9 | 5% |
| 10–15 | 1% |
| 16+ | 7% |
The mean of 4.2 named agents reflects limited bot-policy investment in Graphic Design. 33% of sites name no agents; 38% name exactly one. Only 7% maintain a list of 16 or more named bots.
AI crawlers and SEO audit tools draw near-equal attention in Graphic Design robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 11% |
| SEO / search indexing | 6% |
| SEO audit tools | 11% |
| Commercial scrapers | 5% |
| Social / content scrapers | 0% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 3% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
AI crawlers appears in 11% of Graphic Design sites; SEO audit tools in 11%. The near-equal split reflects a sector that treats both categories with comparable priority. Figures are percentages of all 100 sites.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Graphic Design robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 49% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 34% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 2% |
| Mixed AI posture | 0% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 49%, with path-level mixed rules at 34%. Mixed AI posture (0%) and blanket Disallow (2%) are minimal.
AI crawlers are among the most-targeted agents in Graphic Design robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 62% | 37% |
| CCBot | 7% | — |
| bingbot | 4% | 3% |
| Googlebot | 3% | 3% |
| Bytespider | 6% | — |
| ClaudeBot | 6% | — |
| GPTBot | 5% | — |
| Nutch | 5% | — |
| AhrefsBot | 5% | — |
| MJ12bot | 4% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 4% | — |
| FacebookBot | 4% | — |
| Google-Extended | 4% | — |
| adsbot-google | 4% | — |
| Amazonbot | 4% | — |
| BUbiNG | 4% | — |
| PetalBot | 4% | — |
| Diffbot | 3% | — |
| Omgilibot | 3% | — |
| anthropic-ai | 3% | — |
| Yeti | 2% | 1% |
| Applebot-Extended | 3% | — |
| AdsBot-Google | 3% | — |
| AdsBot-Google-Mobile | 3% | — |
| Omgili | 2% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Graphic Design sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 62% Disallow. Among named agents, CCBot, Bytespider lead the Disallow list — reflecting direct targeting of AI training and indexing bots.
Industry Cohort
Graphic Design 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, Graphic Design's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 99%, JavaScript at 19%, and AI blocking at 9% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.02) is above the group average.