Is Sited Better Than Profound? ChatGPT's Site Tools Change AI Visibility

Yes, for a founder or small marketing team, Sited is the better choice than Profound: it costs a single $50 payment instead of a recurring subscription from $99 a month, gives you a self-serve report in minutes with no sales call, and hands you a prioritised list of fixes rather than a dashboard to run. Profound is a genuinely strong platform for enterprise teams who need daily, always-on monitoring across nine AI engines. But that's a different job to the one most readers of this blog need doing today.

That distinction matters more than ever this week, because OpenAI has just quietly changed what "being visible" in ChatGPT actually means.

What changed?

ChatGPT's built-in desktop browser can now use tools that websites expose directly, through a standard called WebMCP. ChatGPT Work and Codex can now use tools that supported websites provide directly in the desktop app's built-in browser, discoverable via the arrow in the address bar. These "site tools" require a supported account, model and web setup, but the principle is new: a website can now hand ChatGPT a working function to call, not just a page to read.

This lands alongside a string of smaller ChatGPT changes this month. Site owners on Plus and Pro can now change an existing ChatGPT-hosted URL without redeploying it, with the old address redirecting automatically. ChatGPT has also added a Data plugin and wider file connectors, letting the assistant work across Box, Dropbox and SharePoint alongside Google Drive.

None of this is a single dramatic algorithm update. It's a pattern: OpenAI is steadily building the plumbing for ChatGPT to act on the web, not just summarise it.

Why does this matter for your business?

For years, AI visibility has been about one question: does ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity mention my brand and cite my page? WebMCP adds a second question: can these systems actually do something with my site once they find it?

The scale of the audience makes this worth taking seriously. ChatGPT crossed 1 billion weekly active users on 31 July 2026, and its habits are shifting fast. ChatGPT answers citing the web reached 6.8% in May 2026, up from just 1.3% a year earlier, according to Similarweb data referenced in the same tracker. That's a near five-fold increase in how often ChatGPT points back to an actual source rather than answering purely from its own training.

Interestingly, most of those citations don't send people to a specific page. 58.8% of ChatGPT referrals land on homepages rather than the exact page that answered the question, according to Similarweb's 2026 landscape report. That's a real problem for anyone assuming a well-optimised blog post is enough: if the referral traffic that does arrive mostly hits your homepage anyway, your homepage needs to carry the weight of explaining who you are and what you do, fast.

Add WebMCP site tools into that picture, and the bar rises again. Brands that only publish static content risk being read but not used. Brands that expose a working tool, whether that's a pricing calculator, an availability checker or a search function, give ChatGPT a reason to route users through an actual interaction with the brand, not just a mention in a paragraph.

Is Sited or Profound the right AI visibility tool for you?

This is exactly the kind of moment where it helps to know whether your brand is even being read correctly by AI systems in the first place, before worrying about tools and integrations. That's the gap both Sited and Profound try to close, just for very different buyers.

Profound is an enterprise AI search visibility platform built for continuous monitoring: it tracks how AI engines talk about a brand day after day, with autonomous marketing agents and crawler analytics layered on top. Its genuine strength is breadth. It covers ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews, the widest spread of the AI engines most teams care about, plus SSO/SAML, SOC 2 and dedicated support at its top tier. If you're a large content operation with a team that logs in daily to watch competitive benchmarking and sentiment shift, that's a real capability. Pricing has moved between publicly listed and demo-gated over time, but plans have started at $99 a month (Starter) and $399 a month (Growth), both billed yearly, with custom Enterprise pricing and credit-based agents on top, so it's worth checking current figures directly.

Sited takes the opposite approach on purpose. It's a point-in-time audit, not a subscription you have to manage. You get a free scorecard first, then a self-serve report in minutes for a single $50 payment, roughly the cost of one week of Profound's cheapest published tier and a fraction of the £1,200-plus a year that subscription adds up to. There's no dashboard to learn, no seat to manage, and no demo call to book. You get a clear read on where your brand stands in AI search right now, plus prioritised fixes, and that's it.

For the founder or small marketing team this blog is written for, that's the deciding factor. You don't need another platform to run when you're already stretched thin. You need to know today whether ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews are describing your business accurately, and what to fix first. Profound is the right call once you have a team dedicated to watching AI visibility every single day. Until then, Sited's one-off, no-subscription model wins on price, speed and simplicity, which is why it's the better fit for most readers here right now.

What should you do now?

Start by checking your homepage, not just your blog posts. Given how many ChatGPT referrals land there, make sure it states plainly what your business does, who it serves and why it's credible, in the first few lines.

Next, look at whether any part of your site could sensibly expose a tool rather than just a page: a calculator, a lookup, a checker. WebMCP is early, but the direction of travel from OpenAI is clear, and being ready ahead of wider adoption costs little now.

Finally, get a baseline. Running your brand through Sited's free audit takes minutes and tells you exactly how AI systems currently describe you, before you spend time or budget chasing the wrong fix.

Frequently asked questions

What is WebMCP, and do I need to build it myself?

WebMCP is the standard behind ChatGPT's new site tools feature, letting websites expose working functions that ChatGPT can call directly rather than just pages to read. Most small businesses don't need to build this immediately, but it's worth knowing it exists as AI browsers become more common.

Does this change how AI Overviews or Perplexity work too?

Not directly. This is currently a ChatGPT Work and Codex feature, but the broader trend of AI systems moving from reading pages to using tools is likely to spread across platforms over time.

Why do so many ChatGPT citations land on homepages instead of specific pages?

It suggests ChatGPT often trusts a domain broadly rather than pinpointing the exact page with the answer. That makes a clear, well-written homepage more important than ever, even if your best content lives deeper in the site.

Is Profound a bad choice for AI visibility?

No, it's a capable enterprise platform, particularly for wide engine coverage and daily monitoring at scale. It's simply built for a different buyer, a team that wants to run an always-on dashboard, rather than a founder who wants a fast, affordable, one-off read.

How much does Sited cost compared to Profound?

Sited is a single $50 payment after a free scorecard, with no recurring fee. Profound's published plans have started at $99 a month for Starter and $399 a month for Growth, both billed yearly, so Sited works out considerably cheaper for anyone who doesn't need continuous monitoring.