README.md

---
license: cc-by-4.0
pretty_name: "We Fingerprinted the Top 1,000,000 Websites — aggregate technology census by Tranco rank"
tags:
  - web-technology
  - tech-stack
  - builtwith
  - wappalyzer
  - tranco
  - dataset
---

# We Fingerprinted the Top 1,000,000 Websites — open data

Aggregates over a homepage technology-stack fingerprint of the **Tranco top-1,000,000 domain
list**, snapshot **2026-08-25** (`run_id=top1m-2026-08-25-full-v2`, detector version
`2026.10.47`). One record per domain — CDN, CMS, ecommerce platform, web server, SSL/TLS
issuer, DNS provider, analytics, and more — detected from homepage HTML and response headers,
aggregated into the tables below, plus a stratified ~10,000-domain row-level sample.

Companion to the study **[We Fingerprinted the Top 1,000,000 Websites. The Top 1,000 Run a
Completely Different Stack.](https://crawlora.net/blog/top-1-million-websites-techstack-2026?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=techstack-census-2026)**.
The same underlying census is browsable and filterable as a
[queryable Tech Stack dataset](https://crawlora.net/datasets/techstack?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=techstack-census-2026).

## Headline findings

- **The stack flips as you go down the rank list.** Enterprise bot management runs **26.3%** of
  the top 1,000 sites by Tranco rank, falling to **9.8%** of the 100K–1M tail — a 2.7×
  gradient. React meta-frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt.js, Astro, Gatsby, SvelteKit, Remix) fall the
  same way, 16.4% → 6.0%. WordPress and free-tier Cloudflare CDN adoption run the *opposite*
  direction — 10.6% → 19.8% and 20.8% → 42.2% respectively.
- **84.7%** of the 1,000,000 domains resolve a working homepage (847,491 reachable). A
  `reachable=false` record means the fetch itself failed — it is never counted as "zero
  technology detected." See `METHODOLOGY.md`.
- **Chinese-TLD (`.cn`) sites are measurably harder for a Western-signature-trained detector to
  see.** Reachable `.cn` sites average **3.56** detected technologies vs. **7.84** for the rest
  of the reachable universe — a 2.2× gap — and show zero detected technology at **5.09%** vs.
  **0.54%** elsewhere (9.4×). This is a detector-coverage limitation, not a claim about the
  underlying sites — see the "What this dataset is NOT" section of `METHODOLOGY.md` before
  citing it.
- **Let's Encrypt and Google Trust Services combined secure 72.4%** of every site carrying an
  SSL/TLS issuer signature — the free-CA era, measured directly.
- **This exact top-1K/10K/100K/1M rank segmentation is BuiltWith's paid "Market Analysis"
  product**, $295–995/month. This release computes the same kind of cut from the open Tranco
  census, free.

## Files

| File | Contents |
| --- | --- |
| `data/summary.json` | Run identity: `run_id`, detector version, snapshot date, total/reachable/unreachable counts |
| `data/category-prevalence.csv` | Domains carrying a detected technology in each of 40 categories (CDN, CMS, Analytics, …) |
| `data/cdn-vendors.csv` | Vendor share within the CDN category |
| `data/cms-platforms.csv` | Platform share within the CMS category |
| `data/ecommerce-platforms.csv` | Platform share within the Ecommerce category |
| `data/web-servers.csv` | Web server share within the Web server category |
| `data/ssl-issuers.csv` | Certificate-issuer share within the SSL/TLS category |
| `data/dns-providers.csv` | DNS-provider share within the DNS provider category |
| `data/rank-band-stack-inversion.csv` | The headline table — bot management / React frameworks / WordPress / Cloudflare CDN / avg tech count, split across 4 Tranco rank bands |
| `data/tld-distribution.csv` | Domain count by TLD, top 40 + a long-tail "other" bucket |
| `data/cn-visibility-gap.csv` | `.cn` vs. rest-of-universe reachability and detection-coverage comparison |
| `data/analytics-tracking-load.csv` | Analytics-tag adoption, privacy-friendly-analytics share, zero-analytics rate |
| `data/captcha-crosscheck.csv` | CAPTCHA-technology adoption, cross-validated against the separately-run Anti-Bot Adoption Index |
| `data/sample-domains-10k.csv` | ~9,850-row stratified sample (systematic draw by Tranco rank within each of the 4 bands above) — see `data/sample-schema.md` for the exact method and field list |

## Methodology (condensed — see `METHODOLOGY.md` for the full version)

Homepage HTML and response headers for the Tranco top-1,000,000 domains were fingerprinted
against a technology-signature database (CDN, CMS, ecommerce, analytics, web server, and more)
— the same category of detection BuiltWith and Wappalyzer use. HTTP-only (no browser
rendering); Tranco-seeded only. Collected via the [Crawlora](https://crawlora.net?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=techstack-census-2026) web-data API.

### Caveats

- **`reachable=false` does not mean "no technology detected."** It means the homepage fetch
  itself failed. Every adoption-rate figure in this release excludes unreachable domains from
  its denominator.
- **The rank-band table is a pinned snapshot, not a live query** — the public
  `/datasets/techstack/*` API sorts by rank but has no rank-*range* filter, so this specific cut
  is reproducible only from a full-census pass, not the REST API.
- **`.cn` figures describe detector coverage, not the underlying Chinese web** — see
  `METHODOLOGY.md`'s "What this dataset is NOT" section before citing the visibility-gap numbers.
- **This is a frozen dated snapshot, not a live feed.** It will not reflect stack changes made
  after 2026-08-25. For current data, query the [live API](https://crawlora.net/datasets/techstack?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=techstack-census-2026).
- **The row-level sample is ~1% of the full census** (9,850 of 1,000,000 domains), stratified by
  rank band, not the full dataset — see `data/sample-schema.md` for exactly which fields are and
  aren't included and why.

## License & citation

Released under **[CC BY 4.0](LICENSE)** — use it for anything, just attribute.

> Crawlora (2026). *We Fingerprinted the Top 1,000,000 Websites — aggregate technology census by
> Tranco rank.* https://github.com/Crawlora-org/techstack-census-data (CC BY 4.0)

See [`CITATION.cff`](CITATION.cff) for machine-readable citation metadata, and
[`CHANGELOG.md`](CHANGELOG.md) for the refresh history and cadence.