Frequently Asked Questions
on the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide

Yes, they often do. However, it would be wrong to conclude that an enhanced listing in a good buyer's guide is not needed.

Because of our excellent search engine ranking (better than that of any other photonics buyer's guide), Google searches bring many people to our RP Photonics Encyclopedia or directly to our Buyer's Guide pages (e.g. to listings of suppliers) rather than to the website of a particular supplier. Therefore, it is essential to be found in our Buyer's Guide.

By the way, general Internet search engines are not a good replacement for a high-quality buyer's guide. They deliver many results which are not relevant (in the sense that they do not present suppliers) while missing other important ones. For quickly getting a reliable overview of the available suppliers, you need a human-curated resource such as a high-quality buyer's guide.

Also note that people will see the information from our advertisers when reading Encyclopedia articles; that's important for branding.

Yes, some of them do (although we would not recommend it — more reliable results are available on our platform). But when they use ChatGPT, Perplexity or similar tools, those very often take their results from our pages, since RP Photonics is a well established and trusted source of information. As a result, the product descriptions of our advertisers are processed by AI systems and presented to users that way. The shift towards indirect use of our resource therefore does not destroy the value of our Advertising Package.

We also have a blog article on this topic.

That would be ideal in principle, but it is usually neither cost-effective nor reasonable in terms of working time. Therefore, advertisers normally concentrate on the channel which they expect to give the best value for their money and time.

When they measure the generated referral traffic to their website — in our view the most important metric — they regularly find the RP Photonics platform far ahead of the others. With that channel alone, you already reach a large part of the photonics buyers.

We warmly recommend that you check your referral traffic. This is a good indication of how much marketing value is delivered by different websites. It depends on how many professionals actually use the sites and their features.

Of course, not everything of importance can be quantified. However, the nicest website can't deliver quality marketing if it cannot generate substantial referral traffic.

Engineers and scientists working in laser technology, for example, frequently use one of the most comprehensive resources on such topics on the internet — our website with the RP Photonics Encyclopedia and the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, both freely accessible.

Rather than asking you to take our word for it, we suggest that you verify two things yourself:

• that our search engine ranking is far better than that of any other photonics website
• that you get more traffic from us to your website (check your server statistics!)

No. It is not relevant either for users or for advertisers that RP Photonics operates in Switzerland (Europe). Our resource is popular worldwide, and the vast majority of users presumably do not care where we operate; they simply use the content.

Our website statistics also show that we have only slightly less user traffic from North America than from Europe. Given that Europe has a larger population and a strong photonics industry, the opposite would be more surprising.

As a user, you can generally trust that the common buyer's guides do not suppress important suppliers or prevent them from being listed. However, they sometimes list companies for products which those companies cannot actually deliver. That is no risk for you, but it is a nuisance and costs you time. The risk of overlooking important suppliers is much greater if you rely on internet searches.

As an advertiser, you should be careful. Many published website traffic statistics are misleading, and some are simply wrong — usually inflated. Our recommendations:

• Treat all published traffic data with care. Ask what exactly they refer to — for example, the buyer's guide pages alone or a whole website which also contains thousands of articles irrelevant for your purposes. Check the plausibility of the data by looking at the search engine ranking, at least with a quick search for a few important keywords.
• Check what is most relevant for you: the incoming traffic to your own web server. Study at least how many visits you get from which web domains, compare that with what each provider claims, and draw your own conclusions.

We apply exactly these standards to ourselves; see our page on honest and trustworthy offers.

Our statistics show clearly that suppliers with the Advertising Package get far more referral traffic:

How do we achieve that? The usual yellow-pages effects such as using bold letters and displaying a company logo aren't sufficient. Our ad package gives you far more than just some “hello-look-here” effect. The main point is easily understood:

Imagine a product for which we have 50 suppliers, five of which display a product description based on the Advertising Package. If a reader finds something suitable there, they are unlikely to check the websites of the other 45 suppliers — searching for the relevant pages on all of those is simply too inconvenient, whereas for our Advertising Package customers one click leads straight to the right page. Generally, users have to decide quickly what to look at more closely, and they base that decision mostly on the presented product descriptions.

Besides, with the Advertising Package your information will even appear in related Encyclopedia articles — that greatly supports your brand!

In addition, you profit from features like the strongly enhanced company profile, social media links, display of upcoming exhibitions, a prominent display in the alphabetical list of suppliers, one included banner and a special promotion etc.

For more details, see the page on the Advertising Package.

No, this is just one of the extras which you get with our Advertising Package. Our concept is to have a comprehensive package for everything, rather than charging for this and that separately.

We do not expect that, so we frankly do not promise it. For search engine optimization, you need to work on your own website. What we do deliver, as long as you have our Advertising Package, is high-quality traffic driven directly to your website.

Some others promise SEO benefits, about which we are very skeptical. We suggest checking two things yourself: how well their own site actually ranks for the search terms relevant to you (you can hardly inherit ranking from a site which has little), and the fact that Google devalues paid do-follow links.

The cost structure of our Advertising Package is simple and fair: a base price plus a price for each product category. The full price list is published on the page about the Advertising Package, where you also find a calculator for your own case.

The only discount we grant is 25% for small businesses (turnover below 100,000 CHF in the last business year). Otherwise everyone pays the same price — we consider it unfair to reduce the price for those who ask while others pay in full.

We do not charge any commissions on your sales. We do not intrude on your sales process, but simply send potential buyers to your website. It is then up to you to create long-lasting business relations directly with them.

Our prices are very competitive. When compared with other offers, think about the following:

• Nobody else in the photonics area can offer such a wealth of high-quality information for buyers, and therefore our resource is outstandingly popular. Nevertheless, we offer lower prices than some competitors.

• When compared with pay-per-click offers like Google Ads, be aware that the quality of traffic from those sources is far lower (e.g. according to measured engagement on your site), so that the effective cost per sales lead is usually higher (despite typically lower cost per click) — while the branding effect is also largely missing and service is minimal.
• Commission-based cost models, which we do not use, would substantially reduce your sales margins. In comparison, the RP Photonics way gives you a fixed cost without degrading your sales margins.

We are convinced that nobody else gives you a better deal for online marketing in photonics. If you think you know a better place, please tell us — we would genuinely like to know.

Because of our diligent service, it is realistic that within a few hours you can

• learn how our system works,
• enter the required information, and
• get your entries activated,

even if you have 50 products, for example. We can even collect your product descriptions and images from your website.

You find the easy steps on the pages for free listings or the Advertising Package.

No. If you submit your data with the form, they are first reviewed by RP Photonics. If an Advertising Package is ordered, we send you an email with all the details. Your enhanced entries are displayed only after you have confirmed your consent to those.

Sure! You are welcome to update your address data, product information etc. at any time. We will do the corresponding changes on the website without additional cost.

You can even extend your enhancements at any time, e.g. add additional products. Just tell us what you need.

We do our best to be flexible and to serve you well.