# Beyond the Answer Engine: A Growth Playbook for the New Era of eCommerce

If your growth strategy is still centered on chasing keyword rankings and reacting to Google’s named updates, you’re fighting a battle that’s already lost. The search landscape has entered a new era of permanent, high-frequency volatility, and for e-commerce brands, treating this as a temporary storm is a critical mistake.

As politicians are fond of saying these days, let me speak plainly: The old SEO playbook is dead. ☠️💀☠️ If your growth strategy is still centered on chasing keyword rankings and reacting to Google’s named updates, you’re fighting a battle that’s already lost. The search landscape has entered a new era of permanent, high-frequency volatility, and for e-commerce brands, treating this as a temporary storm is a critical mistake. To survive, brands (and agencies) must first adapt to how search itself is changing. The game is no longer just about getting clicks from a cute blue link; it’s about appearing in the AI-generated answers and conversational summaries that are rapidly replacing them. This new discipline is called Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): the practice of structuring your content to be chosen and featured by AI systems like Google’s Gemini Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing’s Copilot. It’s the new technical table stakes for basic visibility. For a complete breakdown of the specific tactics and technical requirements, we recently published a deep-dive guide: From Search to Answers: Why Your eCommerce Brand Needs Answer Engine Optimization Now  But as the Head of Growth here at Roswell, I have to be blunt: visibility alone doesn't pay the bills. Simply showing up in an AI answer is not a sales strategy. The real question is what comes next. How do you build a business that not only survives this new era but also adapts, thrives, and dominates it? This urgency is not manufactured. To get a clear, data-driven picture of this shift, we tasked Google's AI, Gemini, with analyzing the last year of search volatility. As not only AI, but also, arguably, the MOST directly integrated with the search ecosystem, it has a unique perspective on these changes. This isn't just theory; it's an assessment from the heart of the machine. 🙃🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠 here we go… The New Reality: A Snapshot of Accelerating Volatility (An Analysis by Gemini) The Last 12 Months: A New Baseline of High Volatility Looking back over the past year (mid-2024 to mid-2025), the SEO landscape has been fundamentally reshaped by a series of aggressive and overlapping Google updates. The massive March 2024 Core and Spam updates set a new, elevated baseline for volatility, effectively de-indexing some sites while shaking up rankings for nearly all industries. This was followed by a relentless pace of both confirmed and unconfirmed updates throughout 2024, including a notable core update in August. The key takeaway from the 12-month view is the establishment of a "new normal" where significant ranking fluctuation became a constant, rather than a periodic, event. The Last 6 Months: Acceleration & Impact The volatility has demonstrably ramped up in the last six months. This period was defined by a rapid-fire succession of major updates that left little time for recovery. It began with the November and December 2024 core and spam updates, which were significant events on their own. The intensity spiked dramatically with the March 2025 Core Update, a massive, multi-system change that data providers called one of the most volatile updates in recent memory. This period marks a clear acceleration from the already high baseline, with major, official updates happening almost quarterly and creating sustained, high-amplitude ranking shifts. The Last 3 Months: Peak Turbulence & Constant Flux The last three months represent the peak of this escalating volatility. Following the conclusion of the impactful March 2025 update, the environment did not calm down. Instead, the SEO community has been in a state of high alert due to near-constant, unconfirmed ranking fluctuations throughout late April, May, and early June 2025. SEO tracking tools have consistently shown "very high" volatility, with multiple spikes indicating that Google's algorithms are in a continuous state of adjustment. This recent period is less about singular, named updates and more about a persistent, rolling turbulence, directly reflecting the deepening integration of AI and real-time content re-evaluation. In essence, the spikes of volatility have become more frequent and are occurring on top of an already agitated baseline. 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🙃 The e-Commerce Dilemma: When Being the "Answer" Isn't Enough This data proves that relying on any single channel is precarious at best. Even a perfectly executed AEO strategy can be a dead end for sales. Why? Because the AI often summarizes, commoditizes, and strips away the very things that make a customer choose your brand: your story, your user experience, your credibility. A mention in an AI paragraph rarely progresses to an "add to cart." To maintain, much less accelerate sales, you need a more robust strategy. While our team can and will ensure your brand is optimized for both traditional SEO and AEO, our true focus is on building a holistic growth engine that thrives with or without that top-of-funnel mention. The New Growth Playbook: Three Pillars for a Resilient Brand At Roswell, our philosophy is built on creating integrated systems that drive sales, not just visibility. In this new landscape, that means focusing on three core pillars: 1. Build an Impenetrable Brand Ecosystem Authority is the ultimate currency. AEO gets your facts into the system, but a powerful brand makes a customer want to click through. Your goal is to build such undeniable credibility that even when you’re listed next to competitors in an AI answer, you are the obvious choice. What this looks like: A seamless fusion of design, development, and creative. It’s an impeccably designed Shopify storefront that communicates quality at a glance. It's investing in strategic digital PR to earn trust signals from reputable publications, and showcasing verifiable expertise through every product description and guide, making your brand synonymous with the category itself. 2. Weaponize Your Owned Channels If search is a rented apartment, your email and SMS lists are the land you own outright. This is your moat and your battlements. An algorithm update can’t touch the direct relationship you have with your customers. These tried-and-true retention marketing channels are your primary defense against volatility. What this looks like: Treating your retention marketing not as a promotional tool, but as your most valuable media channel. Aggressively build insightful first- and zero-party data sets to create engaging experiences, not just in outreach marketing like email, but also on-site. Nurture that audience with exclusive content and early access that builds a loyal, unshakeable community. This isn't just about the second sale; it's about building a core customer base that has every reason to shop with your brand. 3. Master the Full-Funnel Customer Journey You can no longer afford to be dependent on users starting their journey with a Google search. The keys will be in creating demand elsewhere, and building a brand so compelling that customers seek you out directly. What this looks like: A synergistic approach where your creative and acquisition marketing work as one. It means leveraging powerful ad creative on platforms like Meta and TikTok to generate desire, then directing that traffic to a flawlessly developed Shopify store built for conversion. It’s about using the deep customer understanding from your owned channels to inform your acquisition targeting, creating a powerful feedback loop that makes your success less dependent on any single, unpredictable source of top-of-funnel traffic. The brands that will win in this new era are not the ones who are best at AEO, though that’s not going to hurt either. They will be the ones who build the best, most resilient businesses. AEO gets you a seat at the table. A holistic, full-funnel strategy is how you win the game.

## Contact Information
Address: 225 Broadway Suite 3100, New York, NY 10007
Phone: 212.227.6140
Email: contact@roswellstudios.com

## About Roswell
We are a full service eCommerce agency providing conversion focused experiences for direct-to-consumer (DTC) and B2B brands. Our portfolio grossed over $350M USD in 2024.