"Royal Mail" gets 1.5 million searches a month on Google UK, "Evri" 673,000, "DPD" 301,000, "DHL" 201,000. The domain royalmail.com ranks for 53,387 UK keywords, with 10,901 first positions and about 8.6 million estimated visits a month (DataForSEO, October 2026). It looks like a closed market. It isn't, because almost all that traffic comes from people looking for their own parcel.
The big carriers win on their own name, not on the service. The searches that bring B2B customers to a freight forwarder or a haulier (pallets, groupage, heavy haulage, third-party logistics) are small and expensive. Mid-sized firms hold many of them with a few dozen keywords. On "heavy haulage" the first haulier's own site in the organic results is Chappell's Heavy Haulage, which ranks for 34 keywords in total.
Below you'll find where carrier searches really go, who holds the first pages for B2B services, what's missing and why the calendar matters less here than elsewhere.
Carrier traffic is tracking traffic
Brand volumes peak in December: "Royal Mail" reached 1.83 million searches in December 2025, "Evri" 823,000, "DPD" 368,000, "DHL" 246,000. It's the month of presents, and these are people who want to know where a parcel is. None of them is choosing a transport supplier.
Generic searches are much smaller. "Courier" gets 40,500 searches a month, "send a parcel" 22,200, "parcel delivery" 4,400, "international shipping" 1,900. These are largely consumer searches too, with clicks between £3.00 and £6.18. For a B2B operator, competing here means paying for traffic from households who send a parcel now and then.
The real work starts where the brands stop. "Pallet delivery" gets 2,900 searches a month at £4.97 a click, "freight" 8,100 at £6.13, "groupage" 260 at £10.39. "Third party logistics" gets 1,900, but a click costs £27.05, and "ecommerce fulfilment" 1,000 at £20.84, because the people searching run an online shop and need to hand over warehousing and dispatch. These are typical B2B SEO numbers: little demand, and every enquiry is worth a contract.
Pallets belong to the comparison sites, for now
The first page of "pallet delivery", read on 10 October 2026, opens with an AI-generated answer that cites National Pallets, Parcel2Go, Pallet2Ship, PalletOnline, P4D, Palletways and Parcelhero. Then come PalletOnline, Palletways and National Pallets, a local pack with three firms, and Pallet2Ship, P4D ("from £25.00" in the snippet), ParcelBroker with 4.6 stars from 2,681 ratings in the snippet, Parcelhero, Palletline and SendaPallet.
PalletOnline ranks for 589 UK keywords with about 4,700 estimated visits a month. National Pallets' method shows in the URL the AI answer links to: one page per city, "pallet-delivery/uk/london". The AI answer also quotes its prices: from around £44 to £55 excluding VAT for mini and quarter pallets. Google's related searches confirm the pattern: "pallet delivery near london", "pallet delivery near manchester".
Two of the four questions Google shows under the results are about cost: "How much does it cost to deliver a pallet?" and "What is the cheapest way to ship a pallet?". A haulier that runs groupage has real rates for the routes it covers. One page per route with an indicative price per pallet, transit times and weight limits answers better than a comparison site, which by design doesn't know the route.
The niches belong to mid-sized firms
"Heavy haulage" gets 1,000 searches a month, between 720 and 1,600 all year, at £5.54 a click. At the top there's a "Find results on" row (a Facebook group, Yell, Europages, construction.co.uk, Yelp), then a local pack with three hauliers (Scotts Heavy Haulage in Alfreton, WMB Heavy Haulage in Dumfries, Mar-Train Heavy Haulage in Lisburn), none showing a review. In the organic results:
- first among the hauliers' own sites is Chappell's Heavy Haulage, with a page on heavy haulage across the UK and Europe and 5 stars from 7 reviews in the snippet;
- then two hauliers' explanatory articles: Aardvark SW ("Heavy Haulage Isn't Just About Big Trucks", October 2025) and TW Bowlers of Manchester ("What is Heavy Haulage and When do you need it", 2021);
- in between, two YouTube videos of Allelys Heavy Haulage moving silos and a transformer, an Irish Facebook group, the Cambridge Dictionary and Yell.
No national carrier. Chappell's ranks for 34 keywords with about 34 estimated visits a month: it's on page one of a 1,000-search query with a page that explains what it does. The rules are another way in. Under National Highways guidance, a load is abnormal above 44,000 kg, 2.9 metres wide or 18.65 metres rigid length, and the haulier has to notify police, highway and bridge authorities. None of the snippets on page one gives those figures, and Google's questions include "What is the difference between freight and haulage?": a haulier that explains limits and notifications picks up those visits too.
"Third party logistics" works differently in the UK. The organic results are mostly definitions: Wikipedia, Whistl, DHL, Maersk, the ASCM, Amazon UK, TechTarget, plus a Companies House listing and 3pl.co.uk, a container haulier in Felixstowe that owns the exact-match domain. Here the big names are on page one, but with explanatory guides, not service pages. Mid-sized firms get in through the AI answer at the top, which cites Finishing Line UK (with a page on 3PL services in London) and 3P Logistics alongside Amazon and the ASCM. Whoever writes a clear page on what they do, where and for which goods is the kind of source AI Overviews cite.
The same goes for goods that need specific skills: "refrigerated transport" gets 210 searches at £10.57, "dangerous goods transport" 210 at £9.54, "adr transport" 590 at £2.80. Each one is a page, and each one is a search where the competition is firms of the same size.
"Freight forwarder" is searched to understand
"Freight forwarder" gets 3,600 searches a month at £11.53 a click. Half the first page is definitions: DHL's "What is a Freight Forwarder?", Wikipedia, a GOV.UK guide, the FIATA members directory, Freightnet and Amazon Freight. Google's questions are "What does a freight forwarder do?", "Who are the biggest freight forwarders in the UK?" and "Do I need a licence to be a freight forwarder?".
Among the definitions is Hemisphere Freight Services, a forwarder, with an article explaining what freight forwarding is. It's an example of a firm in the trade getting onto an informational first page with simple content. Two other forwarders, Barrington Freight and International Forwarding, rank with their home pages. A buyer who is working out whether they need a courier or a forwarder is a customer at the start of the journey: whoever explains the difference gets the first contact.
Be careful with generic words. "Haulage" gets 9,900 searches a month, but a click costs £3.55, little more than half of "freight": advertisers see it as less commercial. "Haulage companies" gets 2,400 searches at £5.74, "transport companies" 2,400 at £9.00 and "logistics companies" 2,400 at £11.65: few searches, but these are the phrases of people looking for a supplier.
In B2B, demand is flat
Unlike most local sectors, searches for business transport services have no strong seasons. "Pallet delivery" stays between 2,400 and 3,600 searches every month except September 2025 (4,400), "heavy haulage" between 720 and 1,600, "freight" at 8,100 in nine months out of twelve. The big swings are on the brands (December) and on consumer searches: "courier" hit 74,000 in January 2026 against an average of 40,500.
Two one-month spikes worth knowing: "haulage" rose to 33,100 in May 2026 and "warehousing" to 301,000 in January 2026, against averages of 9,900 and 74,000. For the rest, the work is steady: a page that ranks brings in enquiries all year round.
| Keyword | Average monthly searches | CPC | Peak month (searches) |
|---|---|---|---|
| royal mail | 1,500,000 | £2.07 | Dec 2025 (1,830,000) |
| evri | 673,000 | £0.30 | Dec 2025 (823,000) |
| dpd | 301,000 | £0.45 | Dec 2025 (368,000) |
| dhl | 201,000 | £1.05 | Dec 2025 (246,000) |
| courier | 40,500 | £4.93 | Jan 2026 (74,000) |
| send a parcel | 22,200 | £3.00 | Dec 2025 (33,100) |
| haulage | 9,900 | £3.55 | May 2026 (33,100) |
| freight | 8,100 | £6.13 | Nov 2025 (12,100) |
| parcel delivery | 4,400 | £3.59 | Sep and Dec 2025 (6,600) |
| freight forwarder | 3,600 | £11.53 | Sep 2025 (5,400) |
| pallet delivery | 2,900 | £4.97 | Sep 2025 (4,400) |
| haulage companies | 2,400 | £5.74 | Sep 2025 and Aug 2026 (4,400) |
| logistics companies | 2,400 | £11.65 | Sep 2025 and Mar 2026 (2,900) |
| international shipping | 1,900 | £6.18 | Sep 2025 (3,600) |
| third party logistics | 1,900 | £27.05 | Sep 2025 (4,400) |
| heavy haulage | 1,000 | £5.54 | Nov 2025 (1,600) |
| ecommerce fulfilment | 1,000 | £20.84 | Jan 2026 (2,400) |
| adr transport | 590 | £2.80 | Sep 2025 (1,000) |
| groupage | 260 | £10.39 | Sep 2025 (480) |
| refrigerated transport | 210 | £10.57 | Mar 2026 (390) |
| dangerous goods transport | 210 | £9.54 | Sep 2025 (720) |
With clicks between £5 and £27 on B2B searches, even a few organic visits are worth a lot. Cost per click is the simplest way to put a value on a page: 100 visits a month on "ecommerce fulfilment" are worth more than £2,000 in ads.
Recommended reading: how to do keyword research starting from the services and routes you cover.
Frequently asked questions
Not on the carriers' names, but it doesn't need to: "Royal Mail" gets 1.5 million searches a month, almost all of them tracking. On service searches such as "heavy haulage" no national carrier appears on page one, and the hauliers' own sites that rank are small firms.
Service and goods searches: "pallet delivery" (2,900 searches a month), "freight forwarder" (3,600), "third party logistics" (1,900), "refrigerated transport" (210). Volumes are low but cost per click runs from £4.97 to £27.05, a sign that the people searching are customers with a budget.
Yes, for the searches where Google shows the map. On "heavy haulage" the local pack showed three hauliers with no reviews at all, and on "pallet delivery" the firms had 52 and 142 reviews: a bar you can reach by asking your customers.
Not much. "Pallet delivery" stays between 2,400 and 3,600 searches a month for most of the year and "heavy haulage" between 720 and 1,600. The big peaks are on carrier brands in December and on consumer searches.
From about £4.97 for "pallet delivery" to £11.53 for "freight forwarder", £20.84 for "ecommerce fulfilment" and £27.05 for "third party logistics". That's why a page ranking organically for these searches is worth more than the volumes suggest.
Where to start
Write down the services that bring in the most revenue (groupage, chilled transport, abnormal loads, warehousing) and the five routes or counties you cover best. Search Google for each service, on its own and with the county, and count how many of the first ten results are firms of your size and how many are national carriers or comparison sites. Where you find mid-sized firms and no brands, that's the page to write. Then check your Google Business Profile: on "pallet delivery" the firms in the map had 52 and 142 reviews, and one had none.
If you'd like us to build the map of searches for you, get in touch. For firms looking for qualified B2B enquiries there's also our lead generation service.
