Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries answer questions with cited sources. Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft’s free console for website owners, now reports how often those AI answers cite your pages. The report arrived in February 2026. For Copilot, that’s first-party data no outside tracker can reproduce. It also has limits, covered below.
A citation is not a click. AI Performance counts how often your pages were shown as sources in AI answers. Bing notes that it doesn’t measure traffic or engagement.
What does Bing Webmaster Tools do?
You verify a site, and Bing reports how it crawls, indexes and ranks your pages. The core tools have been around for years. AI Performance is the new layer on top.
| Tool | What it’s for |
|---|
| Search Performance | Clicks, impressions, CTR and position in Bing search |
| AI Performance | Citations of your pages in Copilot and Bing AI answers |
| URL Inspection | How Bing indexed a page, a live fetch and recrawl requests |
| Site Scan | An on-demand audit for broken links, duplicate tags and missing metadata |
| Keyword Research | Phrases people search on Bing and their volumes |
| IndexNow | Instant notice to Bing and other engines when URLs change |
People searching for a "Bing SEO analyzer" usually mean Site Scan. "Bing search analytics" usually means the Search Performance report.
What is AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Bing introduced AI Performance as a public preview on February 10, 2026. It covers citations across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations.
- Total citations: how many times your pages were shown as sources in AI answers during the period.
- Average cited pages: the average number of unique pages from your site cited per day.
- Grounding queries: the phrases the AI used to retrieve your content.
- Page-level citation activity: citation counts for each URL.
- Visibility trends: citation activity over time.
You can export grounding queries with citation counts, page-level data and time series to CSV or Excel. The data is a sample of overall citation activity, so read it as a trend. Bing also says page counts reflect how often a page is cited, not its importance or ranking.
What are grounding queries?
A grounding query is the search phrase an AI system used to find supporting content before it wrote an answer. Bing groups these into summary phrases. They are not the exact questions users typed, and they don’t show individual answers.
They’re still useful. One query can map to several of your pages, and one page can appear under several queries. That mapping shows which pages Bing’s AI relies on for which topics. The idea is close to query fan-out, and the whole process is called grounding.
What are Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare?
In June 2026, Bing added four preview features to the report.
| Feature | What it does |
|---|
| Intents | Sorts grounding queries into categories such as informational and commercial |
| Topics | Clusters related grounding queries into broader themes |
| Citation Share | Your percentage of all citations shown for a grounding query |
| Compare | Overlays a previous period, such as the prior 30 days |
Citation Share is the closest Bing gets to share of voice. But Bing says it doesn’t expose competitor domains and isn’t a competitive scoreboard. You see your slice, not who holds the rest.
Copilot answers leave little room. In our tracking, Copilot answers carried about 4.5 links each, against about 12.3 for Gemini. Each citation slot on Copilot is scarce, so small Citation Share gains matter. Source: Ansvisor tracking data, September 15 to October 14, 2026.
Does a Bing AI citation bring traffic?
Not by itself. AI Performance shows exposure inside answers, and Search Performance shows clicks from classic Bing results. Neither connects a Copilot citation to a visit.
To see visits that come from Copilot, check referral traffic in your analytics tool. Comparing the two over the same period shows whether more citations bring more visitors to the cited pages.
How does IndexNow help with AI answers?
IndexNow is a protocol that tells Bing and other participating engines when a URL is added, updated or removed. Bing’s AI Performance launch post ties it to citations: current content helps AI systems reference the latest version of a page.
Bing Webmaster Tools reports IndexNow submissions, crawl and index status, and recent URLs indexed without IndexNow. Some platforms send the pings for you, and Wix, for example, offers a built-in IndexNow connection. Keeping pages fresh is part of content freshness.
How to measure brand visibility in AI with Bing Webmaster Tools
Verify the site → Open AI Performance → Map grounding queries to pages → Check Citation Share → Compare periods after changes
- Verify your site and give AI Performance time to collect data.
- Sort grounding queries by citations and note the top pages behind each one.
- Look for topics with many grounding queries but few cited pages. Those are content gaps.
- Update the weak pages and submit them through IndexNow.
- Use Compare to check the next 30 days against the previous 30.
Bing’s data covers your own citations only. It won’t show answers that name your brand while citing someone else. Our guide to monitoring brand citations in AI answers covers that wider view.
Bing Webmaster Tools vs Google Search Console for AI search
Both consoles now report on AI features, but they count different things. Most sites need both, since Copilot and Google’s AI results pick sources on their own.
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Google Search Console |
|---|
| AI surfaces | Copilot, Bing AI summaries, select partners | AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| Main AI metric | Citations | Impressions |
| Query-level AI data | Grounding queries, sampled | None in the AI report |
| Share metric | Citation Share, in preview | None |
| AI clicks | Not reported | Not reported |
Grounding queries are the bigger difference. Google’s Generative AI report shows pages but no queries, while Bing gives you the retrieval phrases behind each citation.
What doesn’t Bing Webmaster Tools cover?
- Other AI platforms. ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity each pick their own sources. Google’s side lives in Google Search Console.
- Brand mentions in answers that don’t cite your site.
- The full text of answers and the exact prompts behind them.
- Competitors’ citations and their share.
How Ansvisor helps
Bing Webmaster Tools tells you how often Copilot cites your pages. Ansvisor’s Microsoft Copilot visibility tracker adds the prompts, the full answers, brand mentions and the competitors cited beside you.
Competitor Tracking and Benchmarking compares you with rivals on Copilot, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity. Claude is tracked on Enterprise plans. Citations Monitoring shows which third-party sources win the citations you’re missing. Start a 14-day free trial.
