Overview
JavaScript and Rate Limiting both elevate Photography's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 95% |
| Antibot | 19% |
| CAPTCHA | 28% |
| JavaScript | 42% |
| Rate Limiting | 42% |
| TLS | 32% |
WAF leads at 95%. JavaScript (42%) and Rate Limiting (42%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Photography at 95% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 95% |
| Antibot | 19% |
| CAPTCHA | 28% |
| JavaScript | 42% |
| Rate Limiting | 42% |
| TLS | 32% |
| Has robots.txt | 68% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 15% |
WAF dominates at 95%. JavaScript (42%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by Rate Limiting (42%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 32% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Photography's barrier counts are spread — no single configuration dominates
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 3% |
| 1 barrier | 29% |
| 2 barriers | 27% |
| 3 barriers | 13% |
| 4 barriers | 6% |
| 5 barriers | 20% |
| 6 barriers | 2% |
Barrier counts vary widely across Photography sites. Single-barrier configurations are the modal count at 29%, but the distribution is broad. 41% of sites carry three or more.
Most Photography sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.54 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.54 and a median of Simple place Photography toward the easier end of the sectors surveyed. 61% of sites are Simple to access; 11% require Moderate or above.
Simple is the dominant tier in Photography, but Easy accounts for a significant share
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 61% |
| 2 - Easy | 28% |
| 3 - Moderate | 8% |
| 4 - Complex | 2% |
| 5 - Advanced | 1% |
Simple (61%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 89% of sites, while 8% land at Moderate and 3% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Around seven in ten of Photography sites publish a robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 68% |
68% of Photography sites have a valid robots.txt. The remaining 32% leave crawl policy entirely undefined — a meaningful gap for a sector of this scale.
Most Photography sites name one bot or none in their robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 40% |
| 1 | 25% |
| 2–4 | 10% |
| 5–9 | 8% |
| 10–15 | 6% |
| 16+ | 11% |
40% of Photography sites name zero agents and 25% name one. A mean of 5.0 is pulled up by a small number of sites with extensive policies, while the median stays at 1.
AI crawlers and SEO / search indexing draw near-equal attention in Photography robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12% |
| SEO audit tools | 12% |
| Commercial scrapers | 3% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 8% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 2% |
AI crawlers appears in 15% of Photography sites; SEO / search indexing in 12%. 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 Photography robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 33% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 28% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 3% |
| Mixed AI posture | 4% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 4% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 33%, with path-level mixed rules at 28%. Mixed AI posture (4%) and blanket Disallow (4%) are minimal.
AI crawlers are among the most-targeted agents in Photography robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 55% | 28% |
| Googlebot | 10% | 6% |
| CCBot | 11% | 3% |
| Bytespider | 10% | 3% |
| ClaudeBot | 13% | — |
| Mediapartners-Google | 5% | 6% |
| archive.org_bot | 7% | 4% |
| Applebot-Extended | 7% | 3% |
| GPTBot | 9% | — |
| MJ12bot | 8% | 1% |
| AdsBot-Google | 4% | 5% |
| AhrefsBot | 8% | — |
| YouBot | 5% | 3% |
| Twitterbot | 2% | 5% |
| facebookexternalhit | 3% | 4% |
| msnbot | 5% | 2% |
| AdsBot-Google-Mobile | 3% | 4% |
| PerplexityBot | 4% | 3% |
| bingbot | 5% | 1% |
| AI2Bot | 3% | 3% |
| APIs-Google | 3% | 3% |
| FacebookExternalHit | 3% | 3% |
| FeedFetcher-Google | 3% | 3% |
| Google-Read-Aloud | 3% | 3% |
| Google-Safety | 3% | 3% |
Values are percentages of all 100 Photography sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 55% Disallow. Among named agents, ClaudeBot, CCBot lead the Disallow list — reflecting direct targeting of AI training and indexing bots.
Industry Cohort
Photography 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, Photography's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 95%, JavaScript at 42%, and AI blocking at 15% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.45) is above the group average.