The Top Phrases Searched on CargoRex

Our sister company CargoRex has been monitoring the keywords users are anonymously searching for on the site so in this episode, we’re breaking down what those phrases are.  

What You’ll Learn

This episode breaks down five months of anonymized CargoRex search data to show what logistics buyers actually look for — and where companies are failing to show up.

Key Points

• The top search terms on CargoRex (visibility tools, TMS, freight audit, CDL schools, and company-specific queries).
• Where searches get zero clicks and what that reveals about missing listings, bad keywords, or weak profiles.
• How profile completeness, verification, categories, and tags determine your ranking in the directory.
• Why CargoRex is becoming a research destination with lists and CSV exports to use for AI-powered analysis.
• How this data gives companies market intelligence and a clearer path to showing up for real buyer intent.

Watch this episode on YouTube

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CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:37

Hey, welcome

Blythe Brumleve: 0:42

into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I am your host, Blythe Milligan, and we are proudly presented by SPI logistics. And in this episode, I wanted to give a look into some of the search behavior that is happening on the cargo rex.io website. Now, for folks who may not be familiar with this brand, over the course of the last year, I have been somewhat documenting building a new product in the logistics space meant to break down information silos. The mantra of our site is building the search engine for logistics, where we bring together all of the content creators, the events, the technology, the solution providers, the service providers that are servicing the logistics and supply, greater supply chain industry, and then bring that information under one roof. So we can kind of break down a lot of these information silos that exist across the industry, and it's been a labor of love to say the least. This project itself has been in the works for, you know, years. When I say in the works, I mean, you know, whiteboarding and brainstorming and researching into how I can bring a new product to the logistics market that makes the most sense for me, my brand, and then for the audience and what the audience actually wants. And for the first time since we launched this new product back at manifest in February of 2025 we have some early indicators, some early data that we can proudly share with y'all on this search behavior of what's going on when users arrive to the site. What are they searching for? What are they trying to find out more information on with all of the companies that are now listed over 2000 that are listed on the cargo rec site, what are they searching for? And are they finding answers to that search? And this has been a feature that is available privately to to me and my team. So we get what's called a weekly search behavior report where we can see a breakdown of it's completely anonymized data. So I need to stress that I'm not, you know, seeing information, or I can't even have the ability to see information of the folks who are coming to the site searching for something, and then do they find it, or do they not find it? I can't see the people that are actually making those searches. What I can see, though is the actual search phrase being queried. And so what are those search phrases being added into the search bar that's being added into the site? And then how many times that phrase is being searched, and do they actually take a click? Do they find a business or a piece of content that they really want to engage with enough to click to the next page? And so that's the report that I get and that I am summarizing and now bringing this to all of you. And so we launched this feature back in July, and so we have kind of about five months of data now. You have to understand that this is a brand new website. It's very challenging, I think, in today's modern web world, to build a site that people actually come to. And I say that with, like, you know, full regard for, you know, a lot of the marketing effort or efforts that are being performed and that are being done, mostly in my hypothesis, especially as owning digital dispatch. You know, for the last, like six or seven years, however long this company has been around, digital dispatch is my website management company. But that's how I first got started in or not first got started in freight. That's my first founder. Story in freight is launching digital dispatch, so building websites and managing them for clients within the logistics industry. And so coming back to today's world, I've been doing that for so long, because the web infrastructure as we know it has existed for the better part of the last, I would say, probably 25 years. And so the web world that we find ourselves in now is shifting, where information discovery is still happening on Google. To a large extent, it's still happening in the Search Engine environment, but social media has come in and started, you know, claiming all of those eyeballs. They've been doing that for the better part of the last decade. Then you have YouTube, you have podcasts, you have all of these different things that are commanding your attention that a lot of marketing strategy has shifted to where you really only have there's really only two types of websites that exist anymore that you're going to promote out to all of those channels, number one, and primarily what I do make still today is static websites, so four or five page based websites, they're really meant for, you know, sort of the final Trust, the final sales step, the final sales process that you're, you know, you're marketing yourself out at. Events, at conferences, at with your content, with emails, with sales outreach, cold calling, you're doing all of those things. And then the buyer, or the potential buyer, the potential lead, is going to Google, putting in your company name, coming to your website to see if you're legit. And then they see you're legit. They check out your about us page. They see who maybe you've worked with, or your partner's integrations, all of that, and then they choose to convert that way. So that is a static website. That is mostly what I am seeing companies make now, even less than four pages. I'm seeing a lot of like one and two page websites, if you just want to get something up quickly, just really long one page websites. And so that that's one category, and then the other bucket of categories is, or the other bucket of type sites are these heavy content sites. I would consider everything as logistics, as a heavy content site, because we publish all of our YouTube videos, all of our podcasts, we publish all of those to the site. So we have hundreds, maybe 1000s, at this point, of posts over on everything is logistics site. So that's a little bit different of a beast. Cargo Rex falls definitely in that latter category of a different beast, where it's a not just a directory of the entire industry, or I'm trying to build it for as a directory of the entire industry, but it's my job to make it also a destination that people aren't just going to come here once and do one search and then be gone. I want them to treat cargo wrecks as a destination, not just a directory, and so being able to pull in all of the associations, the service providers, technology events, all of those things under one roof. And so now that you kind of have this, this thought process of, you know, what types of websites exist nowadays, where the internet is kind of shifting to what companies are purchasing and what mainly they're not purchasing. What I'm seeing is that I'm seeing a lot less blogs from company brands, and I'm seeing more of just static based websites. And so knowing all of this, and knowing how the internet is kind of trending in or in how the attention is trending in whatever direction, you know, with cargo Rex, it was really a long thought process of, how do we make this more than just, you know, a logo and company descriptions on a screen, because that's that's not going to keep people coming back to the site. And so that was a big reason why we added events and creators and Creator content to the site using RSS feeds. So then that way we can pull together all of these information resources and these networking and these conversational opportunities, bring them all under one roof, and then that's how you create a destination, not just a directory. And so that was the big sort of thought process, and what we've been implementing over the last year, and all of these different features that have existed. And so that allows us to build that destinational brand from a cargo Rex perspective. So then, that way, we are continuously serving the users up with relevant information of what they want, what they're searching for, and ultimately, if they're finding things or they're looking for things that they're not finding for on the site. And so that's where the weekly search behavior report comes into play, where it is the most important email that I get each week, because this report shows me and shows the team, this is what this is what buyers are searching for. This is what researchers are searching for. If there's a low click through rate, that means they're not finding the information that they're looking for. So that's a service failure on our part, and something that we need to improve, but also maybe some outreach that we need to do. So there's a lot of data that can be gathered from these weekly search behavior reports that, again, are completely anonymized, but when we launched this back in July, so we get, I get these reports weekly. So you're thinking July, August, September, October, November. At the time of recording, this is day before Thanksgiving. So we have almost five full months of this weekly search behavior data that has come through, and I thought it would be a fun episode, as I'm doing my own content planning for 2026 of how we continuously build on the momentum of what we got so far. How can I map this out for 2026 and so, using my own research tools, using the cargo Rex data and and lumping them all together into one sort of research report, I thought it would be fun to go through these phrases together, so with the goal and with the hopes that other folks can see this out there. You know, can I. You know, really see it as motivation to if you're not on cargo Rex, to make an account all all accounts are free, but then to list your business, make sure the company you're working for is already on the site, and then using and interacting with the site on a frequent basis. So then, that way, we are providing you with the informational resources that you're looking for. So all of that to say, let's dive into some of these numbers, because I think they're so fascinating. And my favorite research tool of choice is notebook LM. It's from Google, if you haven't used it before, Google a year ago, they made me eat my words, because a year ago, I was saying that Google's finished their toast. Chat GPT, the user behavior has already shifted away from Google over to chat. GPT, it's just going to be a natural sort of slow death for Google, because they can't get their stuff together. For, you know, the evolution of how people are discovering information. Well, they got their stuff together, and they have been unloading these new products after new products, and these features on top of these. You know, obviously Gemini is their number one platform, but my number one platform from Google is notebook LM, and I'm going to bring this up on the screen right now. So if you're just listening, then what I'm essentially going to show you is just the back end of notebook LM, and how you can upload different files into notebook. Lm, have it do deep research. It can create these research briefs for you, and that was the goal of cargo Rex, is that we want to be able to surface this information for you, and then with a brand new feature that we just added to all accounts, is that the ability to not only save businesses to a specific private list, say you're looking for a new TMS or visibility software, because both of those phrases are at the top of my brain right now, and you'll see why in just a little bit, but Say you're searching for one of those two new things to start scoping out what the buying process is going to look like. And so when you bring in those those different keywords you're searching for it on the site, you have the ability to save businesses to a specific list. Say, visibility. Well, we're just going to go with that example for right now, but say you visibility is a visibility tool is what you're in the market to search for. And so from that, you'll be able to save all of the businesses that are listed under the visibility category as info, all the businesses on cargo regs. You have a maximum of five categories that you can choose from. So there's no there's hopefully no spamming, but we try to limit spamming as much as possible, and and with the categories that you're able to select. So we just want businesses, you know, adding, you know, 30 different categories that don't belong to them, just so they can show up higher in the search engine results. What we wanted to do was limit that amount so you can save all of these businesses to a specific list, and then go into your account and export those, export the that list into a CSV spreadsheet file. Now you take that information and you can go to any LLM of your choice, any research tool of your choice, and you'll be able to, you know, surface more insight from that database simply based on the data that we're providing to you. So we're surfacing the data, we're surfacing the results of the businesses that you're interested in researching more about. Then you can take that information and load it up into your AI tool of choice, and now, coming soon, hopefully before the end of 2025, we're going to add the ability for you to add content and events to those lists as well. So say, visibility. You want to do a full scale research on visibility, and so you'll all of the content creators, which we have over 100 content creators in the logistics and supply chain space. I know there's more out there, but those are the ones that I am surfacing right now. I'm surfacing that those Creator content to those potential buyers, so then that way, they can use their content as research and make the buying process simpler. Now, before the end of the year, what you'll be able to do is say myself, if I have an episode on visibility providers, if I did an interview with a visibility provider, then what's going to happen is that those types of results will be surfaced to the user, and then you'll be able to save that to your visibility list, and then you'll be able to export all of that, not just the businesses, but the content as well. And you'll be able to export all of that into a CSV file and then upload it into your AI tool of choice, which then takes the research game so much further, and there's so many exciting things that you can discover and unearth from this. And that's where the. Guess the central part of this episode is, is going to be, is diving into, you know, taking that informational resources and then lumping it in. And what can we gain from this type of informational resource? And so the sources for this particular episode, I'm not going to be using a list from cargo Rex, though I will do an episode on that in the future. But for the sake of this episode, we are using the internal weekly search behavior reports. What what queries are being searched the most is there a click through rate, what businesses that they're clicking on from that what businesses and brands are being searched for on the site? Is it resulting in a click or not. And so knowing all of this information, you'll be able to not only justify your research process starting with cargo Rex or starting on cargo Rex, but then it can also serve as motivation to the folks out there who are working internally at a logistics or supply chain company. And if you fall within any of those different categories, then I highly encourage you to make sure that your listing is on the site, make sure that that listing is claimed, that it is fully filled out, and then from that fully filled out, then you will rank higher in the search engine results, because we want to make sure that We are surfacing verified profiles, profiles that have an owner, the completeness of the profile also affects how you show up in the search engine results. And then for those who are plus or Premium Members, then you show up even higher. So very similar to how Google displays their search engine results. It's okay. What's the most relevant for the audience. And then here are the quote, unquote sponsored section, but we're combining the two of those together. So if, if you're a plus or a premium member, that is added incentive, added advantage for you to be surfaced at the top of those search engine results based on relevancy, and then also your profile completeness, verification, and then how you are interacting with the site. And so knowing all of that, then you can take your own listening to the next level by simply adding all of this information into your own profile, which is essentially a one page website. So we're going full circle here. So let me go ahead and bring up. This is the back end of notebook, LM, and with the back end of notebook, LM, let's just go ahead and take a peek here on the screen. And so what you can kind of see over on the left hand side, I'm going to get rid of this video for right now, because it's not relevant to what we're talking about right now. But on this left hand side of the screen, what you'll see is all of the different search phrases that we have collected over the last since July, and so all of these different phrases. Now, I could do a little bit more cleanup, especially with the order of how these phrases are being shown, but you can kind of just see it in its raw environment. I mean, this is literally, you know, compiled from me, from we don't have the the full picture recording capability yet that it's in the works. And when I say that, I mean yet, because I spent last night going through each combing through each of our weekly emails, copying and pasting them into a spreadsheet and then taking that spreadsheet and uploading it into notebook. LM, so what you're seeing right now is the spreadsheet that I created myself, but I probably should have sorted it a little bit better, so it's a little bit more of so it's a little bit more, I guess, attention grabbing, but right off the bat, visibility, and that's why I keep talking about it, is because this is a major gap that we could improve on, but it's also a big gap of the solution providers, or not a gap, I should say, but a good flashlight in the dark of what users are searching for, why they're searching for it, and what that click through, rate of them finding The solution that they're looking for. So you can see it right here. Search count was in this particular report. Now their visibility appears several times throughout this, you know, sort of spreadsheet. You can kind of see too. You can see where, you know, digital dispatch. I'll come back to that here in a second, TMS, CDL, schools, even some of these other ones, because we do have an auto fill on our on our site, and so the auto fill will automatically start populating a search result based on what you're typing out in the search bar. So that's why, on this left hand side, you might see some words that aren't completely filled out. That's why, is because they found something or they didn't find something. In this particular case, they're looking for you can see how this particular user is probably all of the same user that was coming through and they were clicking in green zero click through rate. They didn't find anything. Then they clicked their whole business or they they tried to search for their. Whole business didn't find anything. Then they tried different variations of green worldwide, and they didn't find anything. So what was the logical next step for that person to do is they were, if I had to read between the lines, this was somebody from this business looking for their business, and then what happened afterwards is that they didn't find their business. So what they're going to do is they're going to create an account and add their business. To the site. So we can kind of see through here, like IANA is a good example. In this particular part of the report, it was searched once and click through rate 100% but if we look up a little intermodal association that was searched for once and no result, no, no click through rate, and so that that is a little bit of, kind of like a blind spot for us internally to take, where it intermodal Association, just a sort of, you know, a behind the scenes. We probably need to go into the back end of the site and add different synonyms to that search phrase. So the next time that someone comes to the site, when they search for intermodal or intermodal Association, that they're not just showing IANA like you shouldn't have to know the phrase I am. I mean, everybody should know the phrase IANA at this point if you're working in logistics, but you shouldn't have to search for the specific phrase of IANA to find what you're looking to find in intermodal association. So there's some work that we need to do on our end of creating, of telling the tech, of telling the database that these two phrases are synonyms. So that's a lot of like the legwork of, if you listen to any of my behind the scenes episodes previously, building a search engine is really hard, because there's things that you can think about, but there's a lot of things that you can't think about, and you don't know until you actually put the product in front of other users and see how they use the site, and see how they're interacting with the site, in order to know what changes and improvements that you can make in the Future. So there's a lot of just really interesting phrases that you can or insight that you can gain from this. And so just looking through just the raw data, I already have a ton of ideas of new content that we can make on the site that will turn those zero click through rates into something that's more positive, hopefully 100% but that's the goal, I think, for for any site, but like freight audit, that phrase right there no click through rate. So if I have a freight audit business, I'm going to cargo Rex, and I'm making sure that my profile has freight audit at least selected as a category or new, a brand new feature that we just launched is tags. So features, if you have auditing as part of your technological offering, of your event, or anything like that, then you add that tag to your site. So then that way this user that came to the site and search for freight audit that click through rate goes from 0% to 100% or at least it has a higher percentage. You know, if there's two people that search for this phrase, you know, at least 50% of them made, you know, that made the connection or found what they were looking for. Same with freight audit, automation, Mia, I'm assuming, I'm assuming there's a mia from talento is, you know, that didn't result in, you know, a user finding what they were looking for with Mia. And so shout out to Mia. She's been a, you know, a guest previously on the pod. But there's all kinds of examples that we can pull from this type of information, transportation management system. That's another synonym that we need to add to TMS. So that's, you know, work that I need to do on my part. Order full is another one. Look at that order, full, one search, one click through, rate. And now keep in mind this is also these phrases can appear multiple times because this particular report that I created, I just copied and pasted it from the individual weekly search behavior emails. Now the next phase of this, to make it a little bit easier on all of us, what we're going to be doing is just auto populating this to a CSV spreadsheet. And if this episode does well, then what I'll do on a regular basis, probably a quarterly basis, is that I can make these search engine reports with these weekly search behaviors, I can make this public to all of you, and we can continuously make our listings, make our profile better, and make the content discovery, you know, a little bit better in that regard. But there's so much insight that we can gain from this. I mean, just look at just all of these different keywords that are being used. There's a lot of insight that we are gathering from this. I think this is interesting too. Three pls using cargo wise, that search phrase in this particular email was searched for 20. Advice, and nobody came up. And so that is, that is a hint to not just my team, but it could be a hint to other folks out there that with a brand new feature, and I could probably show that to you right now, if I'll just bear with me. Let me for the sake of what we're talking about here, associations, integrations, it's a new feature that we added to all listing pages. So if you're looking at the video right now, and I'll describe it for the audio listeners, we're looking at my listing page for digital dispatch, we just rolled out the associations we support and the integrations that we support through digital dispatch. Now, associations we support, obviously, TMSA. I'm on the board of TMSA, and so I was able to add those to my profile. The integration section, I think is going to be insanely beneficial to all of the listing owners out there. If you don't have a listing yet, you need to get one so you can add all of your different integrations. Because if we go back to this tab, there are people who are searching for three PLS, using cargo wise, we can kind of infer that maybe this is a shipper. Maybe this is, you know, somebody else that is interested to know who is using this particular tool, because I'm already familiar with it. I already know cargo wise. I like it, and I want to know what three pls that are out here that are using that particular tool. And so just keeping these different things in mind, like there's a goldmine of information in here, not just for us to create more content for and create more content around and figure out where our gaps are, but also from a vendor perspective, and making sure that some of these phrases, these high intent phrases, that you are ranking for them, that you are optimizing your profile to rank for. And so I just thought that this was so interesting, to be able to run through all of these different categories. I highly encourage you to watch the video version of this. And what I'll also do is I will share the notebook LM report, because I can make that shareable, so I will add that in the show notes so you can sort through this data yourself, so that, in that way, you can make sure that you are looking at some of these different keyword opportunities and being able to tailor your listing for those keyword opportunities, especially from an intent perspective. Because if I'm working at cargo cargo wise right now, I am encouraging all of my three PL partners to make sure that they add on that integrations list in their listing profile. I want everybody to add cargo wise to their listing profile. Now I actually need to update this because we use digital dispatch as or I use digital dispatch as like, anytime we have new features that we launch on the site, I always make sure that I test them out on my own listings. First, we have a new brand new layout, which is a lot cleaner than the one that we had before, but we have a clear new layout. And then we also have the associations we support. Most associations are added to the site as well. So you can, I mean, I need to put, like, Women in Trucking here. I need to put, you know, Tia, you know, cscmp, a lot of these associations that I've, you know, supported and been to their events and things like that. I need to add them into that section as well. But also my integrations, like I need to be able to add all of the different tech companies that I can create technology for in and around for your website, and aim to add that here. Now McLeod is not necessarily one of those. I have done integrations for clients in the past that includes McLeod as their TMS, but I you know that that's one that, you know I just added as a test. So I'll probably, next time, if anybody looks at this page, I'll remove that and add in our true integrations, which is, you know, a little bit different. So I'll make sure that I get that added or edited, but just to be able to give you a glimpse of what these phrases, you know, are hinting towards. And I think that that's a good segue to take you into the next of one reason I love notebook LM is that, if I'm going to show you this real quick before we get into it, but over on the right hand side, you can see they offer an audio overview, a video overview, Mind Map, reports, quizzes, flashcards, infographics, slide decks. That means that, however best you learn, you can use notebook LM to take data sources from cargo Rex or our weekly search report, and then you can take those sources, and you can add it into a notebook LM and then create those audio interview or audio overviews, video overviews, mind maps, things like that, and it's so helpful. If you learn in a variety of ways, maybe you're you just want to read. It has that for you can clearly see that on the screen right now. Maybe you do better with flashcards. Maybe you do better if it's more of a presentation style format, or maybe you do best if it's a video. So we're going. Run through the video a little bit later. It's about a six minute long video, and I thought that that was really interesting to share as well. But first, the thing I wanted to reveal, or I wanted to show, is this presentation that they made based on my own data, based on my own sources that I uploaded into notebook LM, and I said, I want you to come up with any common themes, any takeaways for the audience and but I want you to remove certain phrases from this report that could skew it. And what I mean by that is that me, personally, I have to be the number one user of the site, at least for right now, I have to be the number one user of the site in order to make sure that I'm creating a good product. And so how do I do that? I use my own listing pages in order to test out new features and new ideas. And so I search for digital dispatch a lot. A new category that we just added to the site was CDL schools. And so I've been searching, me personally, I have been searching for CDL schools, TMS and digital dispatch a lot. And so that's I do that because I actually, myself, personally, have created content around those different categories. And so that's going to skew the results of this end report that I wanted. And so being able to omit those which I'm sure some of those the times that or maybe some of those times that those phrases have been searched has been by different people, but for the sake of this episode, for the sake of this show, I just wanted to omit those from skewing the results. And then this is what notebook LM. And I gave notebook LM those instructions, remove TMS, remove CDL and remove digital dispatch from this analysis, because I knew that those were things that I was regularly searching for, because I wanted to test new features and how the search is performing on the site itself. So knowing all of that, this is the presentation that they that notebook LM created, and it gives a really overarching view of how users are arriving to the site, what they're looking for, what they're not finding. And that is the perfect use case for this title that says visibility, vendor stalking, and the searches that no one is clicking. I want to make it very clear I didn't write any of this stuff. This was created based on the sources I provide, notebook, LM, and so it's you know what cargo rec search data reveals about the modern logistics buyer, incredibly valuable information. And I'm really excited. And I don't know how many times I've said this already in this episode, but it's as a sidebar. It is, it is very, I guess, validating to know that this idea that has been cooked up in my head for a while, spent a lot of money, spent a lot of time and bringing this project to light, and then to see users slowly starting to search more on the site, and seeing that traffic grow and the search engine phrases grow. And then now I can create a report like this. It's, it's, makes me feel very good. Okay, so into, let's get into a little bit of what the actual data is telling us. So okay, so I already kind of read off the title, but going through this, you know, presentation, we have a lot of information. So first title on the second page says, If you want to know what keeps logistics folks up at night. You look at what they search for when nobody's watching at cargo Rex, we own the search bar for logistics. Every query is a signal, a question or a problem waiting to be solved. This isn't a report on dashboards. It's a look at the receipts of buyer behavior. We analyze 1000s of recent searches to understand what professionals are really looking for. I love notebook. Blythe was able to derive that from the site from our research. Anyways, I digress. But this gets into what I was just explaining, that at first glance, the data is a familiar wall of noise, and so you can see right from the jump, TMS, CDL, digital dispatch. That's me. It was a wall of noise. The most frequent searches are the usual subjects, while important, these high volume, broad terms obscure the more subtle, high intent queries that reveal what buyers are doing right before they make a decision. So translation, removing what I am personally searching for and adding what the actual real users are searching for to find the real story. We filtered the intent. We got rid of those three phrases which, while some of those search phrases for those keywords were probably legitimate, for the sake of this episode, we're just going to remove them from the discussion. So we removed the data sets three largest generic terms to stop them from skewing the results. This isn't about ignoring data. It's about isolating the specific actionable signals of buyer intent. And what is left is that people care beyond the basics. So once the noise is gone, three buyer priorities emerge. Number one. On the foundational problem, an ongoing deep seated need for visibility. Number two, the high stakes. Final step, active vendor validation and comparison shopping. And then number three, the unmet demand, a clear thirst for industry intelligence and community. And so those are the big three takeaways that notebook LM created out of our own data sets. So you're just scrolling through some of these different slides that were created. The revelation one, visibility is the foundation, not a feature. 313 times the phrase visibility and its variations were searched, it has a relatively low click through rate, so it suggests that the term is broad, that users aren't just looking for a list of vendors. They're hunting for specific solution. Is it ocean versus last mile, best practices, thought leadership? So that's another little hint to you know, any of the visibility providers out there, providing and going into your listing and making sure that you're selecting your mode, that you cater to any additional tags for best practices, things like that, that you can add to your listing and surface those results to these buyers that are already coming to the site and looking for that information. Now the second revelation buyer use marketplaces for receipts, so marketplaces like cargo Rex are not the top of funnel billboards. They're the place buyers go after they already know your name and want receipts. So this is the other takeaway that we were talking about, is that the highest intent signals in our data come from brand name searches. Buyers hear about a solution elsewhere, a podcast, a conference, a peer recommendation, and then come to cargo Rex to validate, compare and make contact the proof brand searches Drive near perfect click through rates. So let's take a few examples that had an extremely high click through rate. Bit freighter was at the top, so 94% a little over 94% click through rate. It had 18 searches and 17 clicks. Blue Grace was another big one 80% over 80% click through rate, so 31 searches and 25 clicks. Freight bites is another example. 71% click through rate. In Vista, 52% click through rate. The takeaway here is that this is the digital equivalent of walking into a specific store. These users have already decided who to investigate, and they're now in the final stages of their decision making process. Now going on to the final revelation is that is zero click searches reveal untapped demand. So that means zero click searches means that somebody is coming to the site. They're searching for that phrase, and they found nothing. They found nothing. They didn't find anything of what they were looking for. And so partly that is on us, as you know site operators and as you know website designers and developers, is that we create that pathway to success for those users. But sometimes the most important data point is the action a user doesn't take. We found a consistent pattern of users searching for industry, resources, education and community, but not finding a result compelling enough to click. This is where the data says they came. They searched. We disappointed them. It's a clear signal of demand that is not being met by the current listings and content. So that is a place where we need to get better at not just as the cyber operators, but also this is valuable information for the folks who are running a business out there and in a tight market, in the toughest freight market that maybe we've ever seen, you want to get your little wins everywhere and kind of go pet and pitch it again. But you can make a free listing. You can have a free account over on the cargo Rex website. So what do you have to lose? Make sure you're adding that kind of information to your profile. Now there's more evidence that the report brings up, and they call it a hunger for curation in community. Users are actively looking for intelligence beyond vendors solutions, but are coming up empty search terms like publications, associations, CMCA, Academy was also misspelled a bunch, but these are having that low click through rate. So it shows that this is a direct request from a market for curated industry, news, professional development, services and connections to trade organizations. So all your associations out there make sure that you have not just information, not just your description of what your association does, but make sure that you have somebody that can speak on behalf of the Association, that the profile is claimed, that you're adding in regularly all of your different informational resources coming very soon. You'll also be able to start adding white papers and case studies, any awards or accolades that you have earned. You'll also be able to start adding those into your listing as well. So lots of important updates that are coming down the pipeline. But this brings us to the point. Book, and that's turning insight into action. And so this data provides a clear road map for navigating the logistics marketplace, and here's how to use these insights, whether you're buying services or you're selling them. So this is really turning into cargo prices. My ultimate goal is to turn this into the playbook for logistics buyers so they can do smarter, research faster and find better partners. So you want to for buyers from the buyer perspective, you want to treat search like a short list. You want to start with a broad problem, a K, you know, aka visibility, or EG, visibility. That's what we kind of been talking about this entire episode. But then use brand names to validate and compare solutions side by side. That's how buyers are interacting with those phrase demand clarity, not buzzwords. Look for profiles that clearly state who they are and what problems that they solve, the easier they make it to understand, the better their operations are. Cross reference your research, use cargo Rex to find the vendors, and then listen to long form interviews on platforms like everything is logistics. Obviously you're listening on everything is logistics. But like I said earlier, there are tons of podcasters out there and content creators that are making content extremely valuable for this, you know, logistics audience, and so you want to understand how they truly think. So you can find out if this is a company that you actually want to hit your wagon to. Is this is a company that you even want to get on a demo with, and so being able to do your research in the background, before you ever get a call, or before you ever get a call, or, you know, a demo with that particular vendor, do your research first before you start that process, because then nobody wastes their time. Then you can use the cargo, rest cargo Rex, plus advantage by get a strategic edge with filters to narrow by mode, region and integration, plus direct access to vendor contacts to skip the queue. Now, on the plus and the premium listings, we have a contact form that exists on the listing itself. We don't see that information any any buyer that comes to this particular listing. I'm going to show you digital dispatch here just in case. But this contact form which we could probably spruce up from a design perspective, we could spruce that up a little bit more. That's I'm just making mental notes here. But a contact form exists if you're a plus or a premium listing member, and so if a potential buyer is interested, they've learned all about your tool, and now they're ready to convert. What they'll do is they'll come here, they'll fill out this form, and they can suggest or select a general inquiry, request a meeting or other they fill out this form. It goes directly to the listing owner on the listing itself. So we don't see this information only you see this information, and so it filters directly to you, so all the more reason to or more reasons to become a plus or a premium member over on cargo Rex. But back to some of the data insights. Is that that they wait that way they can directly reach out to you. Now, on the flip side, for the vendors and the service providers that the listing owners, what you should be doing is you want to meet the buyers in the final mile of their journey. You want to audit your footprint immediately. Search for your brand, your category and your top three competitors on cargo Rex, are you visible at the moment of decision, you want to optimize for high intent. Your profile must answer two questions in two seconds. Who is this for? And what problem does it solve? Add social proof like logos and case studies to your listing so that the buyer can make that decision very quickly. You want to also intercept your competitors leads. The data proves that your next customer is searching for your competitor by name. Your premium listing is a strategic interruption that gets you into the final consideration set. Now last but not least, the premium listing imperative. Paying to sit in that stream while buyers are already shopping is a cheaper, smarter bet than screaming into the social void. That's why we built cargo Rex to begin with, was to break down those information silos that exist on LinkedIn, that exists on X, you know, trying to sort through all of that madness to find the exact information that you want and need. That's why cargo Rex exists. So last few slides here, I think, yeah, it created 15 total slides. But what the search tape told us this week is that everyone is still chasing better visibility. They're stalking vendors by name when they get serious, and they're actively looking for associations and publications that we haven't guided them to yet. So that is, you know, sort of the main takeaway for me and the team and what improvements that we can start to make to the site. And it finally ends the notebook, LM, takeaways end with the story continues. What we're watching next. So buyer behavior is dynamic. The search bar is our real time barometer for the industry's prior priorities. Moving forward, we'll be tracking the challenger to visibility. Will another core problem overtake visibility as the top non branded search term? Next one is post event spikes. How do brand searches shift after major conferences, product launches or industry news. This will be especially useful after the manifest conference. I'm really, really interested to see how the search behavior is affected, or maybe not affected, but probably a little bit of both, after a big conference like manifest, and then lastly, but closing the content gap. As more associations and publications join the platform, will those zero click searches finally convert and they end on this note, the data is always talking. We'll keep listening, and that is such a perfect place to end this. I had no idea that this episode would be already 46 minutes long, but I just thought it was just such a good encapsulation of everything that we've been building for, and with the goal of this site, bringing it to fruition, building that user base to create, again, a destination, not a directory, so that they're coming to the destination they're searching for. You know their solutions to their problems. Are we surfacing the solutions to those problems or the insight to find the solution to those problems? And if we're not, how can we bridge that gap better in 2026 and so I promised that I would also show you the video, but now is probably a, you know, a good time to end the conversation. If you you know you got everything that you needed out of this. I completely understand if you didn't listen to the last part of this. But I thought what was really interesting is that we can also show this video that notebook LM created based on that same research and all of that same research that I just showed you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring this video up to the stage. The video, the audio, is already playing, so as soon as I add it to the stage, it's going to start playing. So let's let's hear it now

Unknown: 48:43

you look at what they're typing into a search bar when nobody's watching. And lucky for us, we happen to own that search bar. So today, we are going to decode what buyers are really after by digging into the raw search data from cargo rex.io, so what are they actually looking for? Let's find out. Seriously. Just think about it for a second. If you could be a fly on the wall looking over your customer's shoulder at their search history, what do you think you'd find? Well, that's exactly what we're going to do. We're giving you an insider's look into the minds of logistics professionals, and I promise you, the results are pretty fascinating. To get to the truth, we went straight to the source, the raw search data itself. But you know, to find the real gems, the real signals, you first have to filter out all the noise, and there's a lot of it. We had to get rid of those huge, high volume buzzwords that just drown out what people are truly trying to solve. So what's really interesting here is what we took off the list. We filtered out these absolute behemoths, terms like TMS, CDL and digital dispatch. Why? Because they're so massive, they skew the entire data set. By getting them out of the way, we get a much, much clearer picture of the specific problems and solutions that buyers are actively hunting for what's left behind. That's the good stuff. That's pure intent. And that brings us to our very first major clue from the data, which I'm calling the visibility obsession. 313 just let that number sink in. That is how many times our users searched for visibility, or something really close to it. Even after we stripped out all those other massive terms, visibility remains the undisputed champion. It is, without a doubt, the single biggest problem people are trying to solve. Okay, let's look at the numbers here. With 313 searches, it just completely dominates. But what's interesting is the click through, rate, the CTR, it's kind of low, right? Only about 12 and a half percent. So what does that tell us? It suggests that the term is really broad. People aren't just looking for visibility. They're looking for a specific flavor of it, maybe ocean or last mile or exception management. They're digging around trying to figure out who's the real deal. And this really is the key takeaway for this whole section. Visibility isn't just a nice to have feature you check off on a sales deck anymore. It's the absolute foundation, and the fact that hundreds of people are still searching for it, well, that tells us this is a deep, persistent and for many, a still unsolved challenge in the industry. All right, let's move on to our second clue. And this is where things get really interesting. We're calling this one the high intent stock. And trust me, that's exactly what it is. This is when users are doing some late stage research on specific vendors they already know by name. Just look at these numbers. I mean, wow. These are searches for specific company names. And what just leaps off the page are those incredibly high click through rates. Months we are talking 94% 81% 71% this is not casual browsing, folks. This is a targeted mission, and this chart just drives the point home perfectly. A sky high CTR like this means that when someone types in that name, they almost always click on the result. They came to the platform with a name already in their head. Maybe they heard it on a podcast or saw it at a conference, and they are here for one reason, to get more information. We have a name for this behavior, vendor validation. It's when a buyer uses a trusted, neutral platform like cargo Rex to get the real story on a company they want to confirm that they're legit, see what they actually do in plain English and maybe find a direct contact before they make a move. This is a critical step, way down at the bottom of the buying funnel, and this is so, so important for any vendors listening right now, a marketplace isn't just some billboard you hope people see as they drive by. No it's the place buyers go to get the receipts. They've already heard about you. Now they're here to see if you can back up the talk. Okay, on to our third and final clue, and this one points to a really fascinating gap in the market. We call it the zero click void. And yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. These are searches where users found, well, absolutely nothing worth clicking on. So check out this data. People are looking for things like publications, association, even specific groups like the CMCA, but look at that CTR column. It's a big fat zero, 0% they came they searched and they came up completely empty. The conclusion here is pretty blunt, but it has to be said, the demand for this kind of information absolutely 100% exists. Users are actively looking for it. The problem is the right content, the right resources, they just aren't on the platform to meet that demand. So what is it they're actually trying to find? Well, they're looking for community, for intelligence. They want to find regional and national logistics, groups, industry, news, cool, niche newsletters and professional development resources for the everything is logistics. Audience, this should sound really familiar, right? It's a hunger for curated intelligence. Okay, so we've uncovered these three big clues. What does it all mean for you? Let's pull this all together and build a practical, actionable playbook based on what this search data is screaming at us. We've broken this down into two very clear paths. For you buyers out there, it's all about using this knowledge to research smarter and faster. And for the vendors, this is your chance to finally align your marketing with what buyers are actually looking for, not what you think they're looking for. All right, if you're a buyer, here's your new game plan. It's simple. One, start broad search for your biggest problem, like visibility. Two, once you have a few names, go specific search for those brand names to compare them and validate what you've heard. And three, if you want a shortcut, cargo Rex plus, lets you use advanced filters and get direct contacts to just skip the line.

Blythe Brumleve: 54:30

I'm just gonna pause here and say that that I think that is inaccurate. As far as like the shortcut part, I do agree that you should start broad, you should go specific, and then add those businesses to your list. I don't know where they came up with this number three for shortcut, but just I had to interrupt the video really quick in order to just clarify that I don't, I don't know where that particular confusion comes from. So maybe that's a lesson on my end, that this is what Google slash notebook LM is thinking that I provide but, or that particular plan provides but doesn't actually provide that. So we probably need to update, you know, some copy on our site in order to clarify that, but I just want to top it and make that important connotation.

Unknown: 55:16

And for you vendors listening, your playbook is just as direct. First, and this sounds obvious, but you have to make sure you actually show up for your own brand name and your category. Second, be brutally crystal clear in your profile about who you help in what problem you solve. And third, here's the pro move, use a premium listing to intercept buyers at their highest moment of intent, which is when they're looking at your competition. I mean, just think about that for a second. The data doesn't lie that high intent, stocking behavior we just saw proves without a doubt that your next big customer could be on cargo Rex right now, validating your competitor. The only question is, are you going to be there to present a compelling alternative? And that's really the final thought I want to leave you with. This search data is like a window directly into the mind of your buyer. So take a good hard look at your own strategy, whether you're buying or selling, and ask yourself this one simple question, is it truly aligned with what people are searching for when they think nobody's watching

Blythe Brumleve: 56:14

great video, besides that one little thing that I had to interrupt in very minor thing that that I had to do just an overall like nine out of 10 video, as far as an over an overview of the weekly search behavior data that we've been collecting. From July to November, and then analyzing what kind of trends that we can pull from that information. And then how does that help the potential buyers that are on the site, the users that are searching for this information? And then also from a vendor perspective, how can you turn your listing into something that makes you know somebody want to research more about your company. And so that's the ultimate goal of what I've been wanting to do, or what I'm trying to do with the cargo Rex brand. So go to cargo rex.io if you haven't already, we'll put some links in the show notes, just to make it easy for y'all. But then also I'll put links to notebook LM, because this is i it is, you know, not to sound like a fan girl about this, but notebook LM has really changed how I do a lot of informational research and informational discovery. You have to have the sources that you gather that you find interesting, and cargo Rex can be one of those sources, and then you upload them into notebook LM, you have it do some deep research, and then before you know it, you can have a full comparison of how you can make that next buying decision. I only hope that you'll come back to cargo Rex and actually convert on the cargo Rex website in order to show value to the information that that you have. That's my only, I guess, sort of request is that you're going, if you're going to use, you know, some of these export features and tools that that would, you know, that would be an added bonus, because then, if you use our site to convert and send a, you know, a meeting request or a general inquiry on that businesses on that vendor's listing page, then that shows the vendor of the quality of the buyers and the research that We are sending them, and that just creates a longer shelf life for this platform to continue to exist, because a big data website, I can tell you, right now, is not cheap. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of resources. And you know, the better part of my days now are spent working on this brand, and so that that would be my only, like minor request, is that if you find value in the things that we are providing, especially from a buyer perspective, that you just, you know, if you're going to reach out to the vendor, just reach out through us. And so then that way, they have that extra signal that, hey, you know, we're spending our time and attention and marketing dollars in the right places, and cargo rec still belongs in that right place. As far as you know, where companies are going to, you know, invest their money in 2026 and beyond. But hopefully you found this episode useful and helpful. Again, I will link to all of the data and the resource that we used in notebook, LM, in order to create this overview of what the top phrases that have been searched for since, you know, July of this year. We're going to do these, probably on a quarterly basis for now, if you find them valuable, maybe there's something that we can do, like, more on a on a regular basis from, you know, more the premium side of things, or we can also, you know, do some different options there. I'm open to that, but I just, you know, I want to make sure that this is valuable, first to the audience, and then if it's valuable to the audience, it's definitely valuable for us from an internal standpoint, where we know where our content gaps are and where we need to fill those content gaps, but hopefully from a vendor and a buyer perspective, you found all of this information helpful too. So that about does it for more episodes like this? Check out. Everything is logistics.com or you can find us over on YouTube, where we have a lot of really cool playlists now listed out. So if you want to see more of our cargo Rex episodes, we have those in a specific cargo Rex playlist. Also all of our favorite interviews and discussions and episodes with great Sharkey and freight friends. All of those are all readily and easily available over on YouTube. And, of course, the everything is logistics site where you can just search for, you know, whatever you're you're looking for, if you have something specific in mind. But that about does it for this one. For the rest of 2025 you should be seeing some best of content. So your favorite episodes from the everything is logistics podcast that the audience liked, particularly on YouTube or the podcast. We're going to be doing some content curation for those and broadcasting those out in December, and then starting in January, we're going to be having a lot more content come out strong out of the gates for 2026 so then that way, we can continue serving you content of what you're looking for and what you're looking for and not finding. So thank you for your time and attention. Happy holidays to everybody that you know celebrates, and we will see you in the new year. Thank you for so much for being part of this journey and for your support. And if you haven't already, go get signed up for cargo Rex, you can do so at cargo rex.io, but again, we'll see you real soon and go Jazz. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain, for the thinkers in freight, if you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow. Or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything as logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out. My company, digital dispatch, we help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the Next episode, in Go jags. You you you.