Overview Leaderboard Methodology
Industry Report

Freight Forwarders

Businesses that coordinate and arrange international ocean, air, and ground freight transport and customs clearance for e-commerce shipments.

Brands tracked: 34
Brands analyzed: 34
Last updated: 2026-04-22
Model: OpenAI GPT-5
Prompts: 259
Total responses: 1,345
Top Brand Overall?
DHL
91/100

Highest overall AI Visibility Score in this industry.

LBA Leader?
FedEx
96

Highest score on the LBA metric in this industry.

Authority Leader?
DHL
79

Highest score on the Authority metric in this industry.

TOM Leader?
DHL
100

Highest score on the TOM metric in this industry.

DHL is the default answer in AI responses for Freight Forwarders

When users ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini about Freight Forwarders, DHL is the brand that surfaces first - unprompted, consistently, and usually at the top of any list the model generates. Flexport is a close second, but the gap between them is meaningful. If you're competing in this space and you're not in the top handful, you're effectively invisible to AI-driven discovery.

Brand Leaderboard All 34 Freight Forwarders brands ranked

Ranked by overall AI Visibility Score (smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority, and TOM with an LBA-based floor on Authority and TOM, see methodology). Click any brand for the full report.

# Brand LBA Authority TOM Overall
1
DHL
dhl.com
 95
79
100
91
2
Flexport
flexport.com
 70
65
93
75
3
Kuehne+Nagel
kuehne-nagel.com
 81
53
89
73
4
Expeditors
expeditors.com
 78
26
72
53
5
DB Schenker
dbschenker.com
 74
25
75
52
6
UPS
ups.com
 91
27
45
49
7
DSV
dsv.com
 73
15
41
36
8
C.H. Robinson
chrobinson.com
 80
8
49
34
9
FedEx
fedex.com
 96
10
23
30
10
ShipBob
shipbob.com
 63
10
38
30
11
Freightos
freightos.com
 57
11
30
27
12
Maersk Logistics
maersk.com
 65
6
30
25
13
N
Nippon Express
nipponexpress.com
 72
7
12
20
14
CEVA Logistics
cevalogistics.com
 65
6
13
19
15
Easyship
easyship.com
 58
6
14
18
16
Mainfreight
mainfreight.com
 68
7
7
17
17
BDP International
bdpint.com
 63
6
6
16
18
Hellmann Worldwide Logistics
hellmann.com
 67
7
7
16
19
Y
Yusen Logistics
yusen-logistics.com
 67
7
7
16
20
AIT Worldwide Logistics
aitworldwide.com
 62
6
6
15
21
GEODIS
geodis.com
 60
6
6
15
22
Seko Logistics
sekologistics.com
 59
6
6
15
23
S
Sinotrans
sinotrans.com
 62
6
6
15
24
P
Pilot Freight Services
pilotdelivers.com
 57
6
6
14
25
Scan Global Logistics
scangl.com
 54
5
5
14
26
Forto
forto.com
 51
5
5
13
27
Shipco
shipco.com
 51
5
5
13
28
Zencargo
zencargo.com
 46
5
5
12
29
Noatum Logistics
noatumlogistics.com
 34
3
3
9
30
SEKO Bansard
bansard.com
 28
3
3
8
31
WorldWide Logistics
wwcf.com
 5
1
6
4
32
Apex Logistics
apexglobe.com
 8
1
1
2
33
Cargolution
cargolution.com
 2
0
0
1
34
Transmodal
transmodal.com
 2
0
0
1

How is this calculated? Methodology

Every brand in this leaderboard is scored against the same set of 259 shared Freight Forwarders prompts. The same prompts, same model, same iterations. So differences in scores reflect actual differences in AI visibility, not differences in measurement.

Overall AI Visibility Score
Smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority and TOM. Authority and TOM are floored at LBA × 0.1 before the geometric mean (the same floor used in the per-metric cards above, so brand cards and the composite tell the same story). Formula: composite = ((LBA + 5)(Authority + 5)(TOM + 5))^(1/3) - 5. The floor keeps brands the model clearly recognises but doesn't yet recommend from collapsing to zero, while a single genuinely weak metric still pulls the composite down. Full methodology.
Shared industry prompts
For Authority and TOM, all brands in the industry are scored against the same 259 category prompts (e.g. "best SEO tools for agencies"). This makes brand-to-brand comparisons valid - everyone faces identical inputs. LBA prompts are per-brand because they ask brand-specific questions.
Latent Brand Association (LBA)
5 brand probes + 1 control prompt, each run 5 times in recall mode (no web search). LBA = quality × meta × stability × share × recognition × 100. Read the full LBA methodology →
LLM Authority
50 organic category prompts (discovery, comparison, problem and transactional intents), each run once in recall mode and once in retrieval mode. Score = frequency × log-decayed prominence × intent weight, then 50/50 averaged across the two modes. Read the full Authority methodology →
Top of Mind (TOM)
15 high-volume discovery prompts (sourced from Keywords Everywhere search-volume data), each run 5 times in pure recall mode (no web). Score = frequency × (0.5 + 0.5 × log-prominence), volume-weighted. Read the full TOM methodology →