The Xeneta Geo-Hierarchy is developed based on common market practices. Ocean freight rates contracted to/from specific trade routes correlates strongly on price. We have used our database of millions of price points to validate the price correlation. We have grouped ports based on price and not proximity, following the way the industry prices the different connections. In this way, we can offer global data coverage.
Xeneta shows accurate pricing for the exact port–port connection as the rate data is aggregated based on ports with similar pricing. The areas where ocean freight rate correlation is strongest and embedded in today's quotation practices is in North Europe and the Far East. Therefore, in Xeneta, these regions are built up by Main Ports and Sub Ports. The remaining areas are built up by geographical areas.
Understanding Geographic Data Quality
Some port-to-port searches in Xeneta come with a data availability indicator. The indicator is a colored icon that appears beside the name of the trade lane you have searched for. The icon means that Xeneta is showing prices for a larger surrounding area than the one you searched for because there may not be enough prices available to give an accurate benchmark for one or more of the specific ports included in the search.
Example
Let's say that we’re interested in seeing the market average rates between Shanghai and London. When we perform this search, we can see that the result appears with a green icon next to it. When we click on the icon, we see the following message:
Since there are less than five rates available for this exact origin–destination port combination, the system decides that it would be more useful to instead show prices from Shanghai to the entire UK because there are 30+ rates available from Shanghai to the UK.
If you click 
(geo-selector icon), you can see that one level above London is a region called UK Sub. The green dot in the region box means that we only moved up one level (London > UK Sub) to fetch desired prices.
If we had moved two levels up to fetch prices (London > UK Sub > North Europe Sub), the colored icon would have turned yellow because the geographic area is broader and thus the rate data is less accurate.
Summary
Each search result returns information regarding the availability of freight rate data between any two ports or regions.
The green-colored icons indicate that we are still providing pricing benchmarks that are very similar to your original search query and are what we believe to be highly useful pricing data. Yellow and orange icons indicate that we are using data points that may be less precise, but still relevant to your query. Red means there isn't enough data available to provide an accurate price. At least five datapoints are required to provide a minimum level of coverage.
| Color | Precision | Example |
 |
Most precise | London > UK Sub |
 |
Less precise | London > UK Sub > North Europe Sub |
 |
Least precise | London > UK Sub > North Europe Sub > Northern Europe |
 |
Not enough data available | N/A |