Overview
JavaScript and CAPTCHA both elevate Visual Art's active barrier profile
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 20% |
| CAPTCHA | 31% |
| JavaScript | 43% |
| Rate Limiting | 20% |
| TLS | 10% |
WAF leads at 98%. JavaScript (43%) and CAPTCHA (31%) together form a multi-layer active stack — more than most sectors deploy alongside WAF.
Barrier Landscape
WAF leads Visual Art at 98% — JavaScript is the main secondary layer
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 20% |
| CAPTCHA | 31% |
| JavaScript | 43% |
| Rate Limiting | 20% |
| TLS | 10% |
| Has robots.txt | 84% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 22% |
WAF dominates at 98%. JavaScript (43%) leads active secondary barriers, followed by CAPTCHA (31%). The remaining three barriers all sit at or below 20% — a concentrated rather than broadly stacked profile.
Two-barrier stacks are Visual Art's most common security posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 2% |
| 1 barrier | 31% |
| 2 barriers | 34% |
| 3 barriers | 17% |
| 4 barriers | 8% |
| 5 barriers | 8% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
34% of Visual Art sites carry exactly 2 barriers. 33% stack three or more. 2% carry none — a low share of unprotected sites for this sector.
Simple is the dominant access tier across Visual Art
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.47 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.47 and a median of Simple place Visual Art toward the easier end of the sectors surveyed. 64% of sites are Simple to access; 11% require Moderate or above.
Simple is the dominant tier in Visual Art, but Easy accounts for a significant share
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 64% |
| 2 - Easy | 25% |
| 3 - Moderate | 11% |
| 4 - Complex | 0% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0% |
Simple (64%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 89% of sites, while 11% land at Moderate and 0% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Visual Art sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 84% |
84% of Visual Art sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 16% without a file leave crawl policy undefined — a lower gap than the cross-sector average of around 24%.
Visual Art's robots.txt files show moderate engagement with named bot policy
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 23% |
| 1 | 34% |
| 2–4 | 19% |
| 5–9 | 7% |
| 10–15 | 4% |
| 16+ | 13% |
A mean of 10.9 named agents reflects moderate bot-policy investment in Visual Art. 23% of sites name no agents; 13% name 16 or more. The median of 1 suggests a bimodal split.
AI crawlers draw the most robots.txt attention in Visual Art
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 22% |
| SEO / search indexing | 10% |
| SEO audit tools | 19% |
| Commercial scrapers | 10% |
| Social / content scrapers | 3% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 2% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0% |
AI crawlers are mentioned by 22% of Visual Art sites — the leading bot category. SEO audit tools follows at 19%. Figures are percentages of all 100 Visual Art sites including those with no robots.txt.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Visual Art robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 54% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 28% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 2% |
| Mixed AI posture | 0% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 54%, with path-level mixed rules at 28%. Mixed AI posture (0%) and blanket Disallow (0%) are minimal.
AI crawlers are among the most-targeted agents in Visual Art robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 68% | 34% |
| CCBot | 17% | — |
| GPTBot | 17% | — |
| Google-Extended | 14% | — |
| Bytespider | 13% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 12% | — |
| ClaudeBot | 12% | — |
| Claude-Web | 11% | — |
| anthropic-ai | 11% | — |
| FacebookBot | 10% | — |
| PerplexityBot | 10% | — |
| Amazonbot | 10% | — |
| Applebot-Extended | 9% | — |
| cohere-ai | 9% | — |
| MJ12bot | 9% | — |
| PetalBot | 8% | — |
| Diffbot | 8% | — |
| OAI-SearchBot | 8% | — |
| YouBot | 8% | — |
| omgili | 8% | — |
| AhrefsBot | 8% | — |
| Baiduspider | 6% | — |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | 6% | — |
| Timpibot | 6% | — |
| SemrushBot | 6% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Visual Art sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 68% Disallow. Among named agents, CCBot, GPTBot lead the Disallow list — reflecting direct targeting of AI training and indexing bots.
Industry Cohort
Visual Art leads the Design & Creative Arts cohort on AI-blocking policy
| 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 |
Visual Art's 22% AI-blocking rate in robots.txt is the highest in the Design & Creative Arts cohort. WAF (98%) and JavaScript (43%) sit mid-table in the cohort on technical barriers.