Overview
JavaScript leads Printing's secondary barrier stack above the norm
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 19% |
| CAPTCHA | 28% |
| JavaScript | 34% |
| Rate Limiting | 13% |
| TLS | 10% |
WAF at 98% is the dominant barrier. JavaScript (34%) leads secondary coverage. The remaining barriers sit materially lower, giving Printing a narrow but defined secondary layer.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Printing at 98% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 19% |
| CAPTCHA | 28% |
| JavaScript | 34% |
| Rate Limiting | 13% |
| TLS | 10% |
| Has robots.txt | 81% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 6% |
WAF dominates at 98%. JavaScript (34%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by CAPTCHA (28%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 19% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Single-barrier configurations dominate Printing — mostly WAF alone
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 1% |
| 1 barrier | 42% |
| 2 barriers | 33% |
| 3 barriers | 12% |
| 4 barriers | 2% |
| 5 barriers | 10% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
42% of Printing sites carry exactly one barrier — almost always WAF. Two-barrier stacks add 33%. Just 24% of sites layer three or more defences.
Printing sites are predominantly Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.31 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.31 and a median of Simple place Printing toward the easier end of the sectors surveyed. 74% of sites are Simple to access; 5% require Moderate or above.
Simple tier covers more than three-quarters of Printing sites
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 73.7% |
| 2 - Easy | 21.2% |
| 3 - Moderate | 5.1% |
| 4 - Complex | 0% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (74%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 95% of sites, while 5% land at Moderate and 0% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Printing sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 81% |
81% of Printing sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 19% without a file leave crawl policy undefined — a lower gap than the cross-sector average of around 24%.
Printing sites name a handful of agents in robots.txt — few commit to comprehensive policies
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 29% |
| 1 | 38% |
| 2–4 | 18% |
| 5–9 | 8% |
| 10–15 | 3% |
| 16+ | 4% |
The mean of 3.8 named agents reflects limited bot-policy investment in Printing. 29% of sites name no agents; 38% name exactly one. Only 4% maintain a list of 16 or more named bots.
SEO / search indexing and SEO audit tools draw near-equal attention in Printing robots.txt
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 8% |
| SEO / search indexing | 13% |
| SEO audit tools | 10% |
| Commercial scrapers | 3% |
| Social / content scrapers | 3% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 2% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
SEO / search indexing appears in 13% of Printing sites; SEO audit tools in 10%. 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 Printing robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 51% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 29% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 0% |
| Mixed AI posture | 1% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 1% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 51%, with path-level mixed rules at 29%. Mixed AI posture (1%) and blanket Disallow (1%) are minimal.
Googlebot leads named Disallow rules in Printing robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 67% | 28% |
| Googlebot | 8% | 8% |
| Bingbot | 5% | 5% |
| /0.1 (+https://www.criteo.com/criteo-crawler/) | 7% | — |
| Googlebot-Mobile | 3% | 4% |
| Twitterbot | 3% | 2% |
| facebookexternalhit | 3% | 2% |
| Slurp | 3% | 2% |
| GPTBot | 3% | 2% |
| Applebot | 3% | 1% |
| Yandex | 3% | 1% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 3% | 1% |
| SemrushBot | 4% | — |
| Googlebot-image | 2% | 2% |
| Pinterestbot | 2% | 1% |
| PetalBot | 3% | — |
| baiduspider | 2% | 1% |
| dotbot | 3% | — |
| msnbot | 2% | 1% |
| MJ12bot | 3% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 1% | 2% |
| ClaudeBot | 2% | 1% |
| Google-Extended | 2% | 1% |
| Googlebot-Image | 1% | 2% |
| PerplexityBot | 1% | 2% |
Values are percentages of all 100 Printing sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 67% Disallow. Among named agents, Googlebot, /0.1 (+https://www.criteo.com/criteo-crawler/), Bingbot are the most frequently targeted — focused on non-AI crawlers.
Industry Cohort
Printing 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, Printing's barrier rates are broadly in line with peers. WAF at 98%, JavaScript at 34%, and AI blocking at 6% all sit near the cohort median. Tier difficulty (mean 1.33) is above the group average.