Growth tactics that actually worked.
With the receipts.

WhatWorked is a curated database of real growth case studies, tactics, results, and benchmarks across cold email, Twitter/X, SEO, communities, and paid ads. Every play links to its original source and comes with the actual numbers — spend, revenue, ROAS, reply rates — plus built-in research tools to validate a tactic before you run it.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so AI assistants and answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — can quote it directly as the answer to a question. It relies on direct question-and-answer formatting, concise self-contained answers, FAQ structured data, and content that resolves a query without requiring a click.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the discipline of making your brand and content visible inside generative AI search results. It includes allowing AI crawlers to index your site, publishing machine-readable summaries, using structured data, and earning citations and brand mentions that large language models pick up when generating answers.

Traditional SEO optimizes for ranked lists of links; AEO optimizes for being the single quoted answer. SEO targets keywords and backlinks, while AEO targets questions, direct answers, and structured data that answer engines can lift verbatim. The two overlap — fast pages and clear structure help both — but AEO success is measured in citations, not clicks.

WhatWorked includes an AI search volume tool that shows how often keywords are asked inside AI assistants like ChatGPT, SERP snapshots that detect Google AI Overviews for a query, and a brand mentions tracker that finds where you are cited across the web — the three signals you need to plan and measure an AEO or GEO strategy.

Yes — the archive of plays older than the latest 4 months is free forever, and the free plan includes 25 monthly credits for the core research tools. Paid plans from $9/month unlock the newest 4 months of plays, more credits, and the full toolset.

New plays land in monthly drops across all five channels. Each drop is curated from practitioner posts and published case studies from that month, so the newest tactics reflect what is working right now — and the newest months are exclusive to members.

Ten tools: keyword explorer, AI search volume, Google Trends, SERP snapshot with AI Overview detection, ranked keywords, competitor discovery, domain snapshot, tech stack lookup, page audit, and brand mentions. All run on live data, are cached to save credits, and respect your selected country.