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Bing Webmaster Tools Adds AI Citation Performance Data

  • Bing is giving websites their first look at how content performs in AI-generated answers.
  • A new AI Performance dashboard shows citation counts, page-level data, and trend lines.
  • "Grounding queries" show the phrases AI used to retrieve your content.

Bing Webmaster Tools now shows publishers how often their content is cited in Copilot and AI-generated answers, with page-level data and grounding queries.

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds AI Citation Performance Data

Microsoft introduced an AI Performance dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools, giving visibility into how content gets cited across Copilot and AI-generated answers in Bing.

The feature, now in public preview, shows citation counts, page-level activity, and trends over time. It covers AI experiences across Copilot, AI summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations.

Microsoft announced the feature on the Bing Webmaster Blog.

What’s New

The AI Performance dashboard provides four core metrics.

Total citations tracks how often your content appears as a source in AI-generated answers during a selected time period. Average cited pages shows the daily average of unique URLs from your site referenced across AI answers.

Page-level citation activity breaks down which specific URLs get cited most often. This lets you see which pages AI systems reference and how that activity changes over time.

The dashboard also introduces “grounding queries,” which Microsoft describes as the key phrases AI used when retrieving content for answers. The company notes this data represents a sample rather than complete citation activity.

A timeline view shows how citation patterns change over time across supported AI experiences.

Why This Matters

This is the first time Bing Webmaster Tools has shown how often content is cited in generative answers, including which URLs are referenced and how citation activity changes over time.

Google includes AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console’s overall Performance reporting, but it doesn’t offer a dedicated AI Overviews/AI Mode report or citation-style URL counts. AI Overviews also occupy a single position, with all links assigned that same position.

Bing’s dashboard goes further. It tracks which pages get cited, how often, and what phrases triggered the citation. That gives you data to work with instead of guesses.

Looking Ahead

AI Performance is available now in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview. Microsoft said it will continue refining metrics as more data is processed.

Bing has been building toward this for a while. The platform consolidated web search and chat metrics into a single dashboard and has added comparison features and content control tools since then.


Featured Image: Mijansk786/Shutterstock

Category News Tools
SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, ...