World university web census

Census fetched 2026-09-30 · population: Hipo university-domains-list (world_universities_and_domains.json; primary domain per institution), pulled 2026-09-30 · datasets (CC BY 4.0) · live changes

The world university web census, September 2026: what 10,265 universities in 200 countries publish for students, security researchers and AI agents

Every university with a primary domain in the public university-domains list (10,265 institutions) was fetched once over HTTPS on 2026-09-30, with robots.txt, security.txt (both locations), llms.txt and the A2A agent card. 6,811 answered with a website. The US-only IPEDS census is a separate property with finer institution types.

Reachable over HTTPS

66.4%

6,811 of 10,265 universities

security.txt

4.8%

326 of reachable sites; 200 complete and current

Accessibility statement linked

22.4%

1,526 homepages

Privacy policy linked

29.1%

1,980 homepages

Block GPTBot

201

125 block ChatGPT-User; 166 ClaudeBot

llms.txt

400

1 publish an A2A agent card

What we found

By country

CountryIn listReachablesecurity.txtvalidprivacy linkaccessibility linkHSTSblocks GPTBotblocks ChatGPT-Userllms.txtagent card
other4,3432,784 (64.1%)149 (5.4%)9816.6%9.4%37.1%81581670
United States2,3491,910 (81.3%)51 (2.7%)2654.7%53.6%50.6%41211440
Japan572457 (79.9%)0 (0.0%)062.1%4.6%21.0%5220
India477297 (62.3%)2 (0.7%)017.5%5.4%27.6%75370
China39918 (4.5%)0 (0.0%)00.0%0.0%27.8%1100
Germany321215 (67.0%)65 (30.2%)546.0%4.7%64.2%5180
Russian Federation308136 (44.2%)2 (1.5%)211.0%1.5%31.6%12420
France294175 (59.5%)23 (13.1%)23.4%42.3%46.9%4271
Korea, Republic of244146 (59.8%)1 (0.7%)16.2%0.0%24.0%322500
Indonesia197166 (84.3%)4 (2.4%)14.2%0.6%33.1%6380
United Kingdom193141 (73.1%)20 (14.2%)1154.6%66.0%63.1%41130
Iran19386 (44.6%)2 (2.3%)05.8%1.2%48.8%0010
Turkiye188153 (81.4%)3 (2.0%)20.7%9.2%41.8%1150
Brazil187127 (67.9%)4 (3.1%)33.1%6.3%40.9%2160

One page per country with its domains: https://universities.agentexchange.work/by-country-type.

By country

Countries with at least 20 universities in the list; percentages are of reachable sites.

CountryIn listReachablesecurity.txtprivacy linkaccessibility linkHSTSblocks GPTBot
the United States2,3491,910 (81.3%)5154.7%53.6%50.6%41
Japan572457 (79.9%)062.1%4.6%21.0%5
India477297 (62.3%)217.5%5.4%27.6%7
China39918 (4.5%)00.0%0.0%27.8%1
Germany321215 (67.0%)656.0%4.7%64.2%5
RU308136 (44.2%)211.0%1.5%31.6%12
France294175 (59.5%)233.4%42.3%46.9%4
South Korea244146 (59.8%)16.2%0.0%24.0%32
Indonesia197166 (84.3%)44.2%0.6%33.1%6
the United Kingdom193141 (73.1%)2054.6%66.0%63.1%4
IR19386 (44.6%)25.8%1.2%48.8%0
TR188153 (81.4%)30.7%9.2%41.8%1
Brazil187127 (67.9%)43.1%6.3%40.9%2
Mexico166100 (60.2%)20.0%3.0%35.0%2
Canada159111 (69.8%)842.3%52.3%55.9%3
Malaysia15283 (54.6%)126.5%2.4%30.1%3
Poland13880 (58.0%)02.5%6.3%32.5%9
PK13698 (72.1%)29.2%2.0%28.6%0
AR121104 (86.0%)00.0%1.0%26.0%1
the Philippines11877 (65.3%)333.8%6.5%37.7%4
NG11583 (72.2%)015.7%1.2%16.9%1
CO1042 (1.9%)00.0%0.0%50.0%0
Spain9682 (85.4%)34.9%6.1%48.8%6
Italy9375 (80.6%)472.0%45.3%33.3%3
Taiwan8650 (58.1%)28.0%54.0%74.0%5
BD8365 (78.3%)210.8%3.1%13.8%0
Switzerland7663 (82.9%)2012.7%15.9%57.1%2
Ukraine7542 (56.0%)10.0%4.8%11.9%1
PE6756 (83.6%)00.0%0.0%33.9%1
TH6755 (82.1%)018.2%1.8%40.0%0
Chile6536 (55.4%)02.8%5.6%44.4%0
Portugal6541 (63.1%)109.8%2.4%43.9%1
Romania6346 (73.0%)26.5%0.0%30.4%1
SA6233 (53.2%)039.4%3.0%60.6%2
VN6043 (71.7%)02.3%0.0%37.2%1
Australia5953 (89.8%)641.5%34.0%54.7%0
Belgium5034 (68.0%)650.0%5.9%76.5%1
KE4934 (69.4%)026.5%5.9%5.9%1
the Netherlands4837 (77.1%)2075.7%5.4%78.4%0
IQ4729 (61.7%)06.9%3.4%20.7%3
Austria4634 (73.9%)711.8%5.9%50.0%0
EG4426 (59.1%)123.1%0.0%30.8%1
EC4315 (34.9%)06.7%6.7%73.3%0
Hungary4221 (50.0%)10.0%0.0%47.6%3
AF4029 (72.5%)03.4%0.0%13.8%0
AE3724 (64.9%)041.7%25.0%50.0%0
BG3725 (67.6%)14.0%12.0%20.0%0
Sweden3733 (89.2%)2012.1%0.0%63.6%0
VE3722 (59.5%)04.5%0.0%27.3%0
Finland3521 (60.0%)40.0%4.8%76.2%0
SD3518 (51.4%)00.0%0.0%11.1%0
BY3413 (38.2%)00.0%7.7%53.8%2
Denmark342 (5.9%)00.0%0.0%50.0%0
Greece3329 (87.9%)06.9%3.4%41.4%2
MA3314 (42.4%)07.1%0.0%28.6%0
AZ3225 (78.1%)00.0%0.0%12.0%1
CR321 (3.1%)00.0%0.0%0.0%0
GH3123 (74.2%)017.4%4.3%30.4%1
BO3122 (71.0%)04.5%0.0%13.6%0
Slovakia3129 (93.5%)10.0%17.2%20.7%0
Czechia301 (3.3%)00.0%0.0%0.0%0
ET3017 (56.7%)00.0%0.0%23.5%0
DZ2923 (79.3%)14.3%4.3%39.1%0
JO2920 (69.0%)020.0%15.0%50.0%0
KZ2915 (51.7%)06.7%0.0%6.7%0
South Africa2920 (69.0%)035.0%10.0%45.0%2
Ireland2724 (88.9%)266.7%79.2%83.3%3
LK2720 (74.1%)010.0%0.0%10.0%0
DO260 (0.0%)00.0%0.0%0.0%0
SV2518 (72.0%)00.0%0.0%27.8%1
PR2515 (60.0%)56.7%6.7%60.0%0
Israel2422 (91.7%)140.9%31.8%27.3%1
LV2416 (66.7%)06.3%12.5%25.0%1
LB2416 (66.7%)018.8%0.0%31.3%2
Norway2416 (66.7%)40.0%0.0%81.3%0
UZ2315 (65.2%)013.3%0.0%20.0%0
KH2115 (71.4%)00.0%0.0%26.7%1

Ranked table and one page per country with its domains: https://universities.agentexchange.work/by-country.

Named lists

Largest universities without a security.txt (first 60 of 300)

Sites with an expired security.txt (first 60 of 61)

Sites publishing an llms.txt (first 60 of 400)

Sites publishing an A2A agent card (1)

Sites telling ChatGPT-User and Claude-User not to open pages for users (first 60 of 93)

Sites blocking GPTBot (OpenAI's training crawler) (first 60 of 201)

Homepages that redirect to another domain (first 60 of 300)

Sites with a Content-Signal line in robots.txt (26)

Largest universities without an accessibility link on the homepage (first 60 of 300)

What universities are expected to publish

Look up any university

Questions

How many universities publish a security.txt?

326 of the 6,811 reachable university sites (4.8%) publish a security.txt; 200 are complete and current and 61 have expired.

How many universities block AI crawlers?

201 of the reachable sites tell GPTBot not to crawl at all; the report lists per-bot verdicts for ClaudeBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User and the by-country table shows where blocking concentrates.

How many universities link an accessibility statement?

22.4% of the reachable sites link an accessibility statement from the homepage, measured as a homepage anchor whose path mentions accessibility or the visible text "accessibility statement".

Where does the list of universities come from?

From the public university-domains list maintained on GitHub by Hipo (one primary domain per institution, with country codes). It is community-maintained, so a few institutions may be missing or renamed; the US IPEDS census is the authoritative US population.

How many publish an llms.txt or an A2A agent card?

400 publish an llms.txt that parses; 1 publish an A2A agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json.

Method and limits

Population: Hipo university-domains-list (world_universities_and_domains.json; primary domain per institution), pulled 2026-09-30 with each institution's name, country (ISO 3166-1 code in the state column), state or province where the list has one, and the number of domains the list knows for it.. Fetch: one HTTPS request to the apex (then www.), following redirects, 8-second timeout, user agent agentexchange-census/1.0; then robots.txt, /.well-known/security.txt, /security.txt, /llms.txt and /.well-known/agent-card.json on the final host. "Reachable" means any HTTP response over HTTPS, including 403s from bot protection. Homepage links are detected from anchor targets and visible text, so a policy that exists but is not linked from the homepage is not counted. A robots.txt "blocked" verdict means the agent's own group (or the * group) disallows the whole site; "partly blocked" means some paths are disallowed. One snapshot per domain; slow sites and sites that block automated requests are counted as unreachable or reachable-with-error as the server answered. Live re-checks: every 6 hours this host re-fetches the homepage, robots.txt, security.txt and llms.txt of a rotating slice of up to 120 domains (each domain at most once per 14 days, same rules and user agent) and records any difference from the census record on the domain page and in the changes list; a 403, 429 or 503 to our request is recorded as inconclusive, not as a change. Per-domain records: lookup; downloads: CSV, NDJSON and JSON (CC BY 4.0).

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Other censuses

US college web census (IPEDS) · US school district web census · World government web census · Top 100,000 websites census · Agent-readiness grade and fix guides