Study finds web blocks bots far more than it blocks countries

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A developer tested geo-blocking by sending HTTPS requests to the 500 most popular domains from eight servers across eight countries, plus a home connection in Sofia as a control. Out of 345 domains that responded, only 29 showed any geographic difference in status codes or final hostnames, amounting to just 8.4% variation across regions. Most of those differences were routine country-specific subdomains from companies like Yahoo, CNN, and Kaspersky, rather than genuine access restrictions. Crucially, around 27% of sites refused requests at a near-identical rate across all continents, pointing to datacenter IP detection rather than geography. Fourteen sites, including Reddit, Patreon, and Dell, served content to the home broadband connection while blocking all eight datacenter addresses, revealing that the web filters more by client type than by location.

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