Copilot grounds its answers in Bing search, so get indexed in Bing, push changes with IndexNow and read Bing's AI Performance report for citations.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
Microsoft Copilot cites pages it finds through Bing: Microsoft's documentation says Copilot sends generated search queries to the Bing search service to ground its answers, so a site Bing has not indexed cannot be cited. Getting cited is therefore a Bing job first: get indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools, notify Bing of changes with IndexNow, then use Bing's AI Performance report to see which pages Copilot already cites.
If you have only ever set up Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools is the gap to close before any content work for Copilot.
Where does Copilot get the sources it cites?
Copilot turns your question into short web searches and sends them to Bing. Microsoft's documentation says Copilot "parse[s] the user's prompt and identifies terms where information from the web would improve the quality of the response," then "generates a search query that it sends to the Bing search service." The results it gets back become the grounding for the answer and its citations.
Microsoft's own words: "Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Chat both use generated search queries sent to the Bing search service to ground responses in web data." The generated query "consists of a few words informed by the user's prompt," not the full prompt, which matters for content. Copilot is not searching for the long question a user typed; it is searching for a short phrase built from it, and your page has to rank in Bing for that phrase.
That documentation is written for Copilot as organisations use it, the product formerly named Microsoft 365 Copilot. Bing's AI Performance report, covered below, counts citations across Microsoft Copilot as a whole, which is the better measure of what reaches your site.
In Copilot Chat, those generated queries are visible. Microsoft shows "the exact web search queries" in the linked citation section of the response, available in the chat thread for 24 hours. Asking Copilot a buyer's question and reading the queries it ran is the quickest way to see which short searches your pages need to answer.
How do you get a site indexed by Bing?
Add the site to Bing Webmaster Tools, verify it, submit your sitemap and confirm key pages are indexed. If you already use Google Search Console, the import skips verification. Bing Webmaster Tools reads the same robots.txt and sitemap as Google, so the work is mostly setup.
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
Where does Microsoft Copilot get its sources?
From Bing. Microsoft's documentation says Copilot and Copilot Chat send generated search queries to the Bing search service to ground their responses in web data, so a page Bing has not indexed cannot be one of the sources.
02
What is the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and open My Sites.
Choose Import, sign in with your Google Search Console account and allow access. Bing lists your verified sites with their sitemap counts; pick yours and import. Imported sites are verified automatically, and Bing re-validates ownership by syncing with Search Console.
If you do not use Search Console, add the site manually and verify it with one of Bing's methods: an XML file uploaded to your site, a meta tag added to your home page's HTML, or a CNAME record in your DNS, which Domain Connect can add for you at supported DNS providers.
Submit your XML sitemap under Sitemaps if the import did not bring it.
Inspect your most important URLs and confirm Bing reports them as indexed.
Bing notes that traffic data can take up to 48 hours to appear for a newly verified site. Also confirm your robots.txt does not disallow bingbot and that your CDN does not challenge it, since a page Bing cannot fetch cannot be indexed. The guide to getting indexed by Bing covers stubborn cases.
How does IndexNow speed up what Copilot can cite?
IndexNow is a protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting for a crawler to notice. Participating engines, Bing among them, share submitted URLs with each other. Bing's AI Performance announcement recommends it for signalling content changes quickly, which is what keeps Copilot answers pointing at your current page.
Setup takes a few minutes if your platform does not already do it. The IndexNow FAQ lists native or plugin support in WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Drupal and others, and says Cloudflare offers a native integration. For a manual setup:
Generate a key of 8 to 128 characters using letters, numbers and dashes.
Save a UTF-8 text file named after the key, containing only the key, at your root: https://yoursite.com/{your-key}.txt.
Submit one URL with a GET request to https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url={your-url}&key={your-key}, or submit up to 10,000 URLs in one POST to /indexnow with a JSON body holding host, key and urlList.
Read the response: 200 means received, 202 means received with key validation pending, 403 means the key file was not found or did not match, 422 means a URL does not belong to the host, and 429 means you are submitting too often.
A 200 only means the engine received the URL, not that it indexed it. Wire the call into your deploy or publish step so every changed page is submitted automatically. The IndexNow setup guide has the code for common stacks.
What does the Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report show?
The AI Performance report shows when your site is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Bing launched it in public preview on February 10, 2026, calling it "an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling," and said in June 2026 that it remains in preview.
Metric
What Bing says it shows
Total citations
The total number of citations displayed as sources in the selected period
Average cited pages
The average number of distinct pages from your site referenced per day
Grounding queries
The key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was referenced in answers
Page-level citation activity
Citation counts broken down by URL
Visibility trends
How citation activity changes over time
Intents (added June 2026)
Grounding queries grouped into categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Research and Local
Topics (added June 2026)
Related grounding queries clustered into themes
Citation Share (added June 2026)
Your share of all citations shown across all sites for the same grounding query
Compare (added June 2026)
A previous period overlaid on the current view
Grounding queries are the useful column. They are the short searches Copilot actually ran, so a grounding query with low citation share tells you exactly which question a better page could win. The walkthrough of the AI Performance report covers each view.
How should pages be written for Copilot to cite them?
Microsoft published its advice in October 2025, in a post by Krishna Madhavan on getting content into AI search answers: AI assistants break pages into smaller pieces, rank those pieces and assemble answers from several sources. Clear headings, question-and-answer blocks, lists and tables make the pieces easy to lift, while content hidden in tabs, PDFs or images is harder to use.
Microsoft's guidance
What to change on the page
Title, description and H1 are important signals; the H1 should match or closely reflect the title
Make the H1 state what the page answers, in the words people search
Headings act as chapter titles that define content slices
One question or topic per H2, answered directly beneath it
Q&A blocks can be "lifted word for word" into AI answers
Put the answer in the first 40 to 60 words under the heading
Lists and tables make "clean, reusable segments"
Put comparisons and steps in tables and numbered lists
Don't hide answers in tabs or expandable menus, since AI "may not render hidden content"
Move key answers out of accordions and tab panels
Avoid relying on PDFs; use HTML
Publish pricing, specs and docs as HTML pages
Don't put critical information only in images
Put figures in text, with alt text on the image
Anchor claims in measurable facts; write self-contained sentences
State the number, limit or condition, and name the subject instead of "it"
Clean HTML matters here for the same reason. If the answer is only in a JavaScript-rendered component, a fetcher that does not execute scripts sees nothing to lift.
Which tags keep content out of Copilot answers?
Two meta tags limit how Bing uses a page in chat answers. Bing's September 2023 announcement, written when the product was called Bing Chat, says content tagged NOARCHIVE "will not be included in Bing Chat answers" or linked from them, and content tagged NOCACHE may appear, but only as its URL, title and snippet.
That makes them worth checking on pages you want cited. Search your templates and headers for noarchive and nocache in a <meta name="robots"> tag or an X-Robots-Tag header. Some sites add noarchive site-wide for unrelated reasons, such as hiding cached copies, without realising what it does for AI answers. The same announcement says NOARCHIVE content is not used for training Microsoft's generative AI foundation models, and NOCACHE content only by URL, title and snippet.
How do you measure Copilot citations?
Combine the AI Performance report with a monthly manual check. The report shows citations and grounding queries across Copilot and Bing's AI summaries; the manual check shows how Copilot describes you, whether it names competitors instead, and which short queries it generated for a buyer's question.
For the manual check, run 15 to 20 buyer questions in Copilot once a month, open the citations and record whether your site is cited and which page. In Copilot Chat, also record the generated search queries it shows, and compare them with the grounding queries in the report. Where a query appears in both and your citation share is low, that page is the next one to improve. The guide to measuring AI visibility covers how to compare engines on one scale.
See whether Copilot cites you next to six other engines
Bing's report covers Microsoft's surfaces only. LaunchScaler's full audit samples seven engines at once, for $19, one time: it puts 10 buyer questions for your category to Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, reads all 70 answers, and shows which cite you and which competitors they name instead. It unlocks on your report after the free scan, which checks what stops a crawler reading your pages at all: robots.txt blocks, noindex in the meta tag or header, redirect chains, soft 404s, a missing sitemap and content that only appears after JavaScript runs. Run the free scan first, then open the full audit.
A report, in public preview since February 2026, that shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and some partner integrations. It lists total citations, cited pages and the grounding queries the AI used to find your content.
03
Does IndexNow help Copilot cite new pages?
It helps Bing learn about them sooner. IndexNow notifies participating search engines, Bing included, the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted, and Bing's own AI Performance announcement recommends it for signalling content changes.
04
Can I stop Copilot from using my content in answers?
Bing announced in September 2023, when the product was called Bing Chat, that pages tagged NOARCHIVE are not included in its chat answers, while NOCACHE limits use to the URL, title and snippet. Check your pages do not carry these by accident.
05
Why does Copilot cite competitors but not me?
Two common causes: Bing has not indexed the page that answers the question, or the answer is buried where Bing's systems cannot lift it, such as inside a tab, a PDF or an image. Check indexing in Bing Webmaster Tools first.
Allow PerplexityBot, answer questions where Perplexity looks (Reddit and niche directories), keep pages fresh and dated, and write self-contained answers.
