Overview
JavaScript and CAPTCHA both elevate Metals & Mining's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 87% |
| Antibot | 26% |
| CAPTCHA | 30% |
| JavaScript | 39% |
| Rate Limiting | 25% |
| TLS | 16% |
WAF leads at 87%. JavaScript (39%) and CAPTCHA (30%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Metals & Mining at 87% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 87% |
| Antibot | 26% |
| CAPTCHA | 30% |
| JavaScript | 39% |
| Rate Limiting | 25% |
| TLS | 16% |
| Has robots.txt | 72% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 4% |
WAF dominates at 87%. JavaScript (39%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by CAPTCHA (30%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 26% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Two-barrier stacks are Metals & Mining's most common security posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 12% |
| 1 barrier | 26% |
| 2 barriers | 28% |
| 3 barriers | 11% |
| 4 barriers | 8% |
| 5 barriers | 14% |
| 6 barriers | 1% |
28% of Metals & Mining sites carry exactly 2 barriers. 34% stack three or more. 12% carry none — a moderate share of unprotected sites for this sector.
Metals & Mining sites are predominantly Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.29 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.29 and a median of Simple place Metals & Mining among the most accessible sectors surveyed. 73% of sites are Simple to access; 1% require Moderate or above.
Simple tier covers more than three-quarters of Metals & Mining sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 73% |
| 2 - Easy | 26% |
| 3 - Moderate | 0% |
| 4 - Complex | 1% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (73%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 99% of sites, while 0% land at Moderate and 1% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Around seven in ten of Metals & Mining sites publish a robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 72% |
72% of Metals & Mining sites have a valid robots.txt. The remaining 28% leave crawl policy entirely undefined — a meaningful gap for a sector of this scale.
Most Metals & Mining sites name one bot or none in their robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 48% |
| 1 | 31% |
| 2–4 | 9% |
| 5–9 | 7% |
| 10–15 | 2% |
| 16+ | 3% |
48% of Metals & Mining sites name zero agents and 31% name one. A mean of 3.8 is pulled up by a small number of sites with extensive policies, while the median stays at 1.
SEO / search indexing and SEO audit tools draw near-equal attention in Metals & Mining robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 6% |
| SEO / search indexing | 9% |
| SEO audit tools | 9% |
| Commercial scrapers | 0% |
| Social / content scrapers | 0% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 5% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
SEO / search indexing appears in 9% of Metals & Mining sites; SEO audit tools in 9%. 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 Metals & Mining robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 49% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 22% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 1% |
| Mixed AI posture | 0% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 49%, with path-level mixed rules at 22%. Mixed AI posture (0%) and blanket Disallow (0%) are minimal.
A cluster of 5 agents lead named Disallow rules in Metals & Mining robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 48% | 24% |
| Googlebot | 4% | 3% |
| SemrushBot | 4% | 2% |
| AhrefsBot | 4% | 1% |
| BLEXBot | 4% | — |
| MJ12bot | 4% | — |
| ia_archiver | 3% | — |
| Applebot-Extended | 3% | — |
| CCBot | 3% | — |
| GPTBot | 3% | — |
| AhrefsSiteAudit | 1% | 2% |
| Googlebot-Image | 1% | 2% |
| bingbot | 2% | — |
| msnbot | 2% | — |
| DotBot | 2% | — |
| TurnitinBot | 2% | — |
| Yeti | 2% | — |
| Amazonbot | 2% | — |
| Bytespider | 2% | — |
| ClaudeBot | 2% | — |
| Google-Extended | 2% | — |
| meta-externalagent | 2% | — |
| HTTrack | 2% | — |
| Yandex | 2% | — |
| Googlebot-image | 1% | 1% |
Values are percentages of all 100 Metals & Mining sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 48% Disallow. Among named agents, Googlebot, SemrushBot, AhrefsBot, BLEXBot, and MJ12bot are tied at 4% Disallow each.
Industry Cohort
Metals & Mining sits mid-table within the Manufacturing & Logistics cohort
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aerospace & Defense | 87% | 17% | 26% | 36% | 21% | 15% | 67% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Chemicals | 83% | 8% | 19% | 31% | 7% | 8% | 71% | 8% | Tier 1 |
| Civil Engineering | 89% | 13% | 22% | 38% | 19% | 14% | 60% | 5% | Tier 1 |
| Import & Export | 93% | 19% | 17% | 35% | 17% | 13% | 69% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Machinery | 91% | 13% | 17% | 49% | 20% | 15% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Package Delivery | 91% | 15% | 19% | 37% | 17% | 15% | 70% | 3% | Tier 1 |
| Manufacturing | 92% | 20% | 19% | 45% | 24% | 18% | 75% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 87% | 22% | 24% | 41% | 19% | 12% | 62% | 8% | Tier 1 |
| Metals & Mining | 87% | 26% | 30% | 39% | 25% | 16% | 72% | 4% | Tier 1 |
| Plastics & Polymers | 98% | 10% | 29% | 34% | 13% | 10% | 80% | 4% | Tier 1 |
| Transportation & Logistics | 78% | 15% | 16% | 35% | 17% | 18% | 67% | 2% | Tier 1 |
| Warehousing | 98% | 18% | 27% | 38% | 22% | 8% | 75% | 4% | Tier 1 |
Across Manufacturing & Logistics, Metals & Mining's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 87%, JavaScript at 39%, and AI blocking at 4% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.26) is above the group average.