Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report: see when Copilot cites you
Bing's AI Performance report counts how often Copilot and Bing's AI summaries cite your pages and shows the grounding queries behind them. How to use it.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It launched as a public preview in February 2026 with two headline metrics, Total Citations and Average Cited Pages, plus the grounding queries the AI used to find your content and a citation count for each page.
The grounding queries are the useful part: they are, in effect, the questions Copilot is using your pages to answer. Below is what each part of the report means in Microsoft's own words, how to act on it, and what it cannot tell you, checked in September 2026.
What is the Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report?
It is a report that counts citations of your site in Microsoft's AI answers. Microsoft introduced it on February 10, 2026 as "a new set of insights that shows how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations," and called it "an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling."
It extends Bing Webmaster Tools' search reports to AI answers: which of your URLs are referenced, how often, and how that changes over time. Microsoft adds that "Bing respects all content owner preferences expressed through robots.txt and other supported control mechanisms," so your robots.txt and robots meta rules still decide what Copilot may use.
How do you open the AI Performance report?
Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, then open AI Performance for that site and pick a date range. Microsoft says data "is refreshed daily, with a short processing delay," and that historical data is "available only for the time ranges shown in the dashboard." If your site is new to Bing Webmaster Tools, allow time for data to appear.
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and add your site. If it is verified in Google Search Console, the import option adds and verifies it automatically.
Select the site and open AI Performance.
Choose a date range from the options the dashboard offers.
Read the dashboard totals, then the grounding query and page tables below them.
Use the export option to download the table you are filtering.
If Bing has not indexed your important pages, fix that first, because a page Bing cannot find cannot be cited; see .
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What is the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools?
It is a report, released as a public preview in February 2026, that shows how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, which pages are cited, and the grounding queries the AI used to retrieve them.
What do Total Citations and Average Cited Pages measure?
Total Citations is how many times your content was shown as a source in AI answers during the date range. Average Cited Pages is the average number of unique pages from your site cited per day. Neither tells you where in an answer you appeared, and Microsoft says the page figure does not indicate ranking or authority.
Metric
Microsoft's definition
What it does not tell you
Total Citations
"the total number of citations that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers during the selected time frame"
Placement or presentation within an answer
Average Cited Pages
"the average number of unique pages from your site that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers per day"
Ranking, authority, or any page's role in an answer
Grounding queries
"the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was referenced in AI-generated answers," from a sample
The exact questions users typed
Page-level citation activity
Citation counts for specific URLs in the date range
Page importance, ranking or placement
Visibility trends
Citation activity over time
Why it changed
The two headline numbers answer different questions. A rising Total Citations with a flat Average Cited Pages means the same few pages are being cited more often. A rising Average Cited Pages means more of your site is being used.
What are grounding queries?
Grounding queries are the search phrases Microsoft's AI generated to retrieve content before writing an answer that cited you. Bing shows them as "grouped, generalized phrases" rather than "individual user questions or highly specific long-tail queries." The data "represents a sample of overall citation activity," so treat the list as representative, not complete.
The Grounding Query to Pages mapping links the two sides. Select a grounding query to see which of your pages were cited for it, or select a page to see which grounding queries led to it. You can filter by only one at a time, and exports reflect the filter you have applied.
Expect some mismatches. Microsoft notes that queries and pages "may each be sampled over slightly different time windows," so the citation count for the same query and page can differ depending on which you filtered by first. It calls this "expected" and says it "does not indicate missing or incorrect data."
How do you turn grounding queries into content work?
Treat them as a list of questions your pages are already being asked to answer, and make each answer better. For every high-count query, open the cited page and check that it answers the query clearly and early. For queries citing the wrong page, fix that page or your internal links. For related queries with no strong page, write one.
Export the grounding queries for the last few months.
Export the page mapping and pair each query with the page Bing cited for it.
For each pair, read the cited page's first paragraphs. If they do not answer the query directly, rewrite them so they do.
Where a query cites a weak or off-topic page, strengthen the page that should answer it and link to it from the cited one.
Where several queries share a theme and no page covers it well, write a page for that theme.
After updating a page, notify Bing through IndexNow, which Microsoft says "helps keep information fresh across search and AI experiences."
Use Compare to overlay the next period against this one and see whether citation activity moved.
Microsoft's own advice for pages that are indexed but rarely cited matches this list: improve "clarity, structure, or completeness," use "Clear headings, tables, and FAQ sections," support claims with "Examples, data, and cited sources," and keep content current. Bing's webmaster guidelines add "Surface key information early" and "Focus Each URL on a Single Topic." The wider Copilot playbook is in how to get cited by Microsoft Copilot.
What do Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare add?
They are four preview features that give context to the raw counts. Intents label each grounding query by purpose, Topics group related queries into themes, Citation Share shows your slice of all citations for a query, and Compare overlays two time periods. None of them identifies competitors or explains why numbers changed.
Feature
What Microsoft says it does
How to use it
Intents
Classifies grounding queries by intent, such as Informational, Commercial, Comparison, Learn and Solve, Research, Planning or Local
Match format to intent: comparison tables for Comparison, steps for Planning, short explanations for Informational
Topics
Groups related grounding queries into themes
Find subject areas with citation activity but thin coverage
Citation Share
"the percentage of citations attributed to your site out of all citations shown for a specific grounding query"
Track your share on the queries that matter most; it does not reveal who holds the rest
Compare
Overlays a previous period on the chart, current as a solid line and comparison as dashed
Check before and after content updates, remembering it "does not explain why the change happened"
Microsoft is careful about Citation Share: it "does not represent rankings, traffic, or a quality score," and changes can come from "user demand, content changes across the web, model updates, freshness signals, and partner refresh cycles."
What doesn't the AI Performance report tell you?
It does not measure clicks, rankings or any engine outside Microsoft. Microsoft says a citation "does not represent traffic, clicks, or user engagement," and that AI Performance metrics differ from search metrics, which measure "rankings, clicks, and traffic." It also shows no competitor names and cannot prove that a content change caused a citation change.
Fill the gaps from other sources:
Clicks from Copilot: your analytics referral data.
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode: Search Console's generative AI performance report, which counts impressions of your links there.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude: your own runs of buyer questions, recorded monthly; the method is in how to measure AI visibility.
Why might your AI Performance report be empty?
Usually because Copilot has cited you rarely or not at all in the date range, which Microsoft says "does not indicate a penalty or exclusion." If the report stays empty, check that Bing has indexed your key pages and that no robots rule is limiting how Copilot can use them.
Bing's guidelines list the rules that matter. NOINDEX keeps a URL out of Bing search, Copilot and grounding results. NOARCHIVE "prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and grounding results." NOCACHE "limits Copilot to using only the URL, title, and snippet." NOSNIPPET and DATA-NOSNIPPET "may limit Copilot citation quality." Microsoft's own list of reasons a page may never be cited is plainer: it may be "less relevant to common user questions," lack "clarity or depth," be "outdated," or be "outperformed by other sources."
Check that Bing and Copilot can use your pages
Run the free scan on LaunchScaler to check the access side before reading too much into an empty report. It takes a URL, needs no account and runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories at no cost. Its search checks read noindex in the meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag header, robots.txt blocks, canonical problems and sitemaps that list redirecting or dead URLs, all of which keep pages out of Bing's index and so out of Copilot's answers.
What are grounding queries in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Grounding queries are the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was then referenced in an AI-generated answer. Bing shows them as grouped, generalized phrases from a sample of citation activity, not as individual user questions.
03
Does a citation in the AI Performance report mean a click?
No. Microsoft says a citation means your content was visibly referenced or shown in an AI-generated answer, and that it does not represent traffic, clicks or user engagement.
04
Why don't I see any grounding queries for my site?
Bing says grounding queries may not appear when there is limited aggregated citation activity for your site in the selected date range, and that this is expected and does not indicate a penalty or exclusion.
05
Does the AI Performance report cover ChatGPT or Google?
No. It covers Microsoft surfaces: Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode have their own generative AI performance report in Search Console, and ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude have no first-party report.
In Ahrefs' 75,000-brand study, web mentions correlated with AI visibility at 0.66 to 0.71, backlinks at 0.22. Where a young product should earn mentions.
