Bing Webmaster Tools for AI Visibility

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, with total citations, cited pages, grounding queries and trends ([Bing](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2026/2/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview/)). It launched in public preview in February 2026 and added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare in June 2026 (Bing).

Disclosure: MentionX sells AI visibility monitoring. Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's own tool and covers Microsoft surfaces. Facts are from Microsoft Bing, accessed 30 Oct 2026. Points marked "Our view" are interpretation.

On this page

• Which surfaces does it cover?
• What are the core metrics?
• What did the June 2026 update add?
• How do you set it up?
• What weekly workflow works?
• What are the limits?
• How does it compare with Google Search Console?
• Exercise
• Checklist
• From MentionX data: how citation behaviour differs by engine
• Worked example: Ledgerline's first month in AI Performance
• Why does a Bing report matter if you care about other assistants?
• How should you read grounding queries?
• How do you use Citation Share without over-reading it?
• How do you connect the report to content work?
• What do people get wrong with this report?
• Who should own it?
• How do you use Topics and Topics Portfolio?
• Common questions
• Related
• Sources

Checked on 31 October 2026. "Our view" marks MentionX opinion. Ledgerline is a fictional company used for illustration.

Which surfaces does it cover?

Bing lists (Bing):

• Microsoft Copilot
• AI-generated summaries in Bing
• Select partner AI integrations

It doesn't name the partners. Our view: don't treat this as a ChatGPT or Google report. Use it for the Microsoft ecosystem and measure other assistants separately.

What are the core metrics?

Sources: Bing, Bing help. Data refreshes daily with a short processing delay. Time ranges include 7 days, 30 days, 3 months and custom.

Bing notes that changes in citation volume can reflect changes in user questions, your content updates or system and model updates, and that trends can't be attributed to a single cause (Bing help).

What did the June 2026 update add?

From Bing's announcement (Bing):

• Intents: grounding queries classified into categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Learn and Solve, Research, Creation and Local.
• Topics: related grounding queries grouped into thematic clusters, e.g. several solar queries into "Solar Energy".
• Citation Share: your share of all citations shown across all sites for a given grounding query. Bing calls it observational, not a ranking or competitive scoreboard; it doesn't expose competitor domains or represent traffic share.
• Compare: overlay a previous period on the current one.

In October 2026 Bing added Topics Portfolio (beta), which shows how your presence is distributed across themes, how much demand each represents and how competitive each is (Bing).

Bing describes these as preview features whose classification quality is still improving.

How do you set it up?

1. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools (you can import from Google Search Console).
2. Submit your sitemap and enable IndexNow; see IndexNow for Bing, Copilot and ChatGPT.
3. Open the AI Performance report and set a 30-day range.
4. Export grounding queries and page-level citations.

What weekly workflow works?

Our view:

1. Check the trend with Compare against the previous period.
2. List top cited pages. Make sure they're accurate, current and link to your key commercial pages.
3. Review grounding queries for topics you expected to own but don't appear in.
4. Check Citation Share on your most important queries; low share means many sources compete.
5. Use Intents and Topics to see whether you're cited for research, commercial or local intents, and plan content for gaps.
6. Log content changes with dates so you can sanity-check later shifts, remembering Bing's warning about attribution.

What are the limits?

• Microsoft surfaces only, plus unnamed partners.
• Grounding queries are a sample (Bing).
• No placement, ranking or traffic data.
• Preview features may change.
• Historical data only for the ranges shown (Bing help).

Our view: pair it with Bing's regular search performance data and your server logs for Bingbot and Copilot-related fetches; see reading server logs for AI bot visits.

How does it compare with Google Search Console?

Our view: as of 30 Oct 2026, AI Performance gives more AI-specific citation detail than Google provides for AI Overviews, where AI feature data is folded into Search Console's overall performance reporting. See Google Search Console and AI Overviews data.

Exercise

Export 30 days of AI Performance data. List your top 10 cited pages and top 20 grounding queries, mark each query's intent, and pick three pages to update based on the gaps.

Checklist

• Site verified in Bing Webmaster Tools
• Sitemap submitted, IndexNow on
• Weekly trend check with Compare
• Top cited pages reviewed for accuracy
• Grounding query gaps turned into briefs
• Changes logged with dates

From MentionX data: how citation behaviour differs by engine

Method. Read-only aggregate queries over MentionX scans from 22 August to 29 October 2026 (UTC): 2,217 engine runs (2,154 completed) across 18 anonymised projects and six engines.

Bing's report tells you about one ecosystem. Our own sample shows why you shouldn't generalise from it:

Engines differ in how often they show sources at all, so a strong citation count in one report says little about the rest. The pages that get cited also vary by type:

Our view: compare the page types in your Bing top-cited list with this mix. If your cited pages are almost all blog posts, your documentation and pricing pages may be harder for engines to use than they should be.

Limits. A convenience sample of mostly B2B software projects, run through engine APIs, which can behave differently from the consumer apps. Perplexity, Copilot and DeepSeek figures come from a single day (26 October 2026), so treat them as a snapshot, not a trend.

Worked example: Ledgerline's first month in AI Performance

Ledgerline is a fictional accounts-payable tool. Figures are illustrative.

Ledgerline verifies its site in Bing Webmaster Tools by importing from Search Console, submits its sitemap and turns on IndexNow. After 30 days, the AI Performance report shows a few hundred citations spread across about 40 pages.

Three pages account for most citations: a guide to invoice approval workflows, a glossary page on three-way matching and the pricing page. The pricing page is cited for grounding queries about cost, but its last update is a year old. The team updates it, changes the lastmod date and pings IndexNow.

Grounding queries also show a gap. Queries about approval rules for multi-entity companies appear often, but Ledgerline has no page on them. The team writes a focused guide and logs the publication date, so it can compare later trends while remembering Bing's warning that changes can't be attributed to a single cause.

Why does a Bing report matter if you care about other assistants?

Microsoft's AI surfaces are a real audience in their own right, and the report is one of the few places where an engine operator tells you directly which of your pages it cited. That makes it useful as a reference point even if most of your audience uses other tools. Our view: use it as one instrument in a set. Pair it with prompt tracking across engines, your server logs and your analytics, so you're not steering by a single gauge.

How should you read grounding queries?

Grounding queries are the phrases the AI used when retrieving content it cited, and Bing describes them as a sample (Bing). They're not what users typed. Read them as a view of how the system breaks a question down. Group them by theme, mark the intent and look for patterns: a cluster of comparison phrases, for example, suggests the engine is building comparison answers that could use your page.

Don't treat the absence of a query as proof it never happened, because it's a sample. Do treat repeated themes as worth acting on.

How do you use Citation Share without over-reading it?

Bing calls Citation Share observational, not a ranking or competitive scoreboard, and says it doesn't expose competitor domains or represent traffic share (Bing). Use it to compare your own queries with each other. A query where your share is low and the intent is commercial is a good candidate for a clearer page or more third-party coverage. A query where share is already high may need maintenance rather than new work.

How do you connect the report to content work?

Turn findings into briefs. For each topic gap, write down the grounding queries, the intent, the page you'll create or update and the date. For each top-cited page, schedule a review so it stays accurate. When you publish or update, use IndexNow so Bing hears about the change quickly; see IndexNow for Bing, Copilot and ChatGPT.

Keep a change log next to your exports. Bing notes that changes in citation volume can reflect user questions, your content or system and model updates (Bing help). A log doesn't prove cause, but it helps you rule out explanations.

What do people get wrong with this report?

• Treating it as a ChatGPT or Google report. It covers Microsoft surfaces and unnamed partners only (Bing).
• Reading citations as traffic. A citation is a visible reference in an answer, not a click.
• Reacting to daily swings. Use 30-day ranges and Compare rather than single days.
• Ignoring preview status. Intents, Topics and Topics Portfolio are previews whose classification is still improving (Bing; Bing).

Who should own it?

The report sits between SEO and content. Our view: give one person the weekly check and the monthly export, and make the content team responsible for acting on the briefs it produces. Share a short monthly summary with the top cited pages, notable new or missing topics and what changed. That keeps the report useful rather than a dashboard nobody opens.

How do you use Topics and Topics Portfolio?

Topics group related grounding queries into themes, and Topics Portfolio (beta) shows how your presence is spread across themes, how much demand each represents and how competitive each is (Bing; Bing). Use the portfolio view for planning rather than weekly checks. Each quarter, list the themes where demand is high and your presence is low, then decide which fit your product and which don't. Not every theme is worth chasing; a topic you can't credibly speak to won't help you even if it has demand. Our view: the most useful output is a short list of three to five themes to build around next quarter.

Common questions

Does AI Performance include ChatGPT? Bing lists Copilot, Bing AI summaries and select partner integrations, without naming partners. Don't assume any specific assistant is included.

Is Citation Share a ranking? No. Bing calls it observational and says it doesn't represent traffic share.

How fresh is the data? Bing says it refreshes daily with a short processing delay.

Related

• IndexNow for Bing, Copilot and ChatGPT
• XML sitemaps for AI discovery

Sources

• Microsoft Bing, Introducing AI Performance, February 2026; AI Performance help; Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare, 16 Jun 2026; Topics Portfolio (beta), 13 Oct 2026

All accessed 30 Oct 2026.