--- 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.