AI Tools Are Using the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide — What Does This Mean for Your Marketing?
Posted on 2025-12-09 as part of the RP Photonics Marketing News (available as e-mail newsletter!)
Permanent link: https://www.rp-photonics.com/marketing_news_2025_12_09.html
Author: Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, RP Photonics AG
Abstract: Engineers are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT for supplier searches, but these tools often get their photonics supplier data from the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide. While we still do not recommend relying on AI for supplier discovery, this trend clearly increases the indirect reach of our advertisers, making product descriptions published in the Buyer's Guide more valuable than ever.
The use of AI tools such as ChatGPT has increased dramatically, and engineers now even ask them for supplier recommendations. Understandably, some advertisers have asked whether this might reduce traffic to the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide; some may even wonder whether directories like ours will eventually be made obsolete by AI. Our recent analysis, however, helps to clarify what is actually happening — and the results are both interesting and encouraging.
AI Systems Access Our Buyer’s Guide on a Large Scale
In November, our web server registered over 185,000 page loads from AI systems, mostly with the user agent “ChatGPT-User/1.0” — this is ChatGPT loading pages when preparing a response to a user prompt (not during model training, which we currently do not allow). (In the following months, it got even more — see our statistics page).
Of these, 11,730 page loads were for pages of the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide listing suppliers for specific photonics products. In addition, supplier profile pages were accessed 16,959 times. Encyclopedia articles received even more AI-driven page loads: They have the largest share.
These data strongly indicate that when users ask ChatGPT about suppliers — e.g., “Who sells external-cavity diode lasers?” — ChatGPT often retrieves the corresponding page from our Buyer’s Guide to generate its answer. (Unfortunately, it frequently does this without clearly indicating the used source.)
Our human website traffic is still substantially larger than the mentioned AI-related traffic. But AI has already begun contributing a significant share.
Is it a Good Idea to Use AI for Supplier Searches?
We clearly do not recommend this — not only because as a directory provider we naturally want our resource to be used. There are solid reasons why this approach is unreliable. In short:
- You get a quasi-random selection of suppliers, based on partly unknown and constantly changing data sources and heuristics, while we provide an expert-curated directory.
- You miss important features we offer, including a wealth of technical/scientific background information and an AI-based assistant for defining your requirements and checking selected suppliers.
We recently explained these issues in detail in an RP Photonics Spotlight article: “AI vs. Expert-curated Supplier Directories: How to Reliably Find Photonics Suppliers?”
However, if users opt for ChatGPT & Co. anyway, they often receive data originating from RP Photonics — just not in a reproducible or reliable way.
Why AI Tools Rely on Our Buyer’s Guide
AI systems look for structured, authoritative and comprehensive sources. The RP Photonics Buyer’s Guide is naturally a top choice for them, offering
- consistent and well-explained terminology and product categories,
- expert-curated supplier assignments,
- a lot of related high-quality technical context,
- and product descriptions from advertisers.
This allows AI tools to interpret supplier information far more reliably than when scanning random company websites. Given that thousands of photonics suppliers exist, an AI assistant does not have time to check all of them for product relevance; it must rely on a data source to determine which few suppliers to examine more closely. (It may not even visit the websites of those suppliers, even if it presents links.)
In simple cases, the AI may use only its training data; otherwise, it will draw upon external structured sources — often a directory.
What This Means for Advertisers
Our advertisers benefit in two important ways:
1. Direct Human Visibility
Thousands of engineers and scientists continue to use the Buyer’s Guide as before — our human traffic remains strong (and in the Buyer's Guide was even unusually strong in November). They even more extensively use the RP Photonics Encyclopedia, where product descriptions of advertisers also appear in many places.
Note that our transparently published website statistics reflect only human traffic, not the AI bot accesses.
2. Indirect Visibility Through AI Tools
When ChatGPT retrieves our pages listing suppliers for a specific product category, it typically selects a subset of the many suppliers. Companies providing clear product descriptions (our advertisers) are far more likely to be included, because the bot can easily verify that they indeed offer something suitable. Just as with human users, advertisers therefore have much higher chances of being recognized.
Interestingly, in this way our advertisers reach even users who never directly visited our website. This is a new channel for discoverability.
Also note: While other ad formats (e.g., banner graphics next to encyclopedia articles) are usually ignored by AI bots, enhanced supplier listings with product descriptions are exactly the content these bots need to do their job.
How to Optimize the Advertisements
The RP Photonics marketing concept has always been based on presenting useful information to people searching for suppliers. That principle now also applies to AI tools acting as intermediaries. To maximize both direct human and AI-mediated visibility, your product descriptions must clearly explain what you offer.
Our long-standing recommendation still applies: Keep descriptions concise, so human users can quickly see whether your company is a suitable supplier and deserves a closer look. The same helps AI tools. You may consider adding slightly more detail when appropriate, especially key technical terms that precisely define your offering. But buzzwords and vague slogans do not contribute to clarity and often appear less convincing — to both humans and AI.
Also remember: Just as a human user may follow your links when needing more details, an AI tool can also visit your website. So you don't need to replicate all details on our site.
Comments on Attribution
It is unfortunate that AI tools are so far often using detailed content from our website without properly acknowledging the origin:
- First of all, this cannot reasonably be considered as fair use; we actually hope that AI regulations (in addition to our clear terms of use) will soon enforce proper attribution. (The vast majority of Internet users probably share the opinion that fairness requires things to develop in that way.)
- Second, AI users would also be better served if the data sources used were consistently disclosed. However, tool providers may hesitate to reveal the inconsistency of their approach (using different data sources and strategies at different times) and thus try to divert attention away from issues like data sources.
Fortunately, even in the current situation with wild-west practices of major players, we can deliver excellent advertising value — and this helps sustain a platform that benefits the entire photonics community. Some of our advertisers underline that by also sponsoring the Encyclopedia. We all — our users, advertisers, and RP Photonics — don't want AI to “kill the Internet” and can continue working together to maintain what is vital for our community.
Conclusions
It is a reality that some people use AI tools for supplier searches, although we do not recommend doing so in professional work. However, AI tools are not making supplier directories obsolete; they are using them! The RP Photonics Buyer’s Guide is already a heavily used data source for AI-generated supplier recommendations, extending the reach of advertisements beyond traditional website traffic.
We will continue to monitor developments, enhance our platform in many respects, and push for fair attribution practices from AI systems. Meanwhile, a strong presence in our Buyer’s Guide remains one of the most effective ways for photonics suppliers to ensure that their company and products are visible — both directly to humans and indirectly via AI.
This article is a posting of the RP Photonics Marketing News, authored by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta. You may link to this page, because its location is permanent.
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