Bing Webmaster Tools now lets publishers see how their content is performing in AI-generated results across Microsoft Copilot and Bing, making it the first major search platform to offer dedicated AI visibility reporting.
Microsoft announced the AI Performance dashboard on February 10, 2026. This feature is available now in public preview on any verified site.
The report tracks citation visibility directly. It does not measure clicks, rankings, or traffic from AI responses. Instead, it answers the question that publishers have been asking since the beginning of productivity search: Is my content really referenced?
Fabrice Canel, Product Manager at Microsoft, confirmed to X that more data is coming: “Just a preview, you’ll get more in 2026.”
What the AI Performance Dashboard shows
The dashboard presents five key metrics focused on AI quoting activity:
- Complete quotes: How many times your site was cited as a source in AI-generated answers during the selected period
- Citation page average: Daily average of the number of unique URLs from your site indexed across all AI senses
- Basic questions: Sample phrases the AI used when finding the content quoted in its responses. These aren’t necessarily what users searched for, but questions the AI system used to find and pull your content. Microsoft describes them as “key phrases that the AI used to find the content that was referenced in the AI-generated responses,” and notes that the data shown represents a sample of all citation activity.
- Page-level citation function: Citation is calculated by URL, so you can see which specific pages are mentioned the most
- Visible trends over time: A timeline view that shows how quote activity is increasing or decreasing across AI senses
The report includes quotes across Microsoft Copilot, AI snapshots in Bing, and select integration partners, though Microsoft hasn’t specified exactly which partners are included.
AI Citations Without Click-through Data
The dashboard does not include click data. You can see that your content is being cited, but you can’t see how many users actually clicked from those AI responses on your site.
As Search Engine Land reported, publishers still can’t tell if AI visibility is delivering measurable business value.
Citation frequency also does not indicate rank, prominence, or how much a page contributed to a particular response. A page can be mentioned once in passing or serve as the main source of AI feedback, and the data does not separate the two.
However, this is more granular AI-specific data than anything currently available in Google Search Console (GSC). Google includes AI Overview and AI Mode in all of its Performance reporting, but does not provide a dedicated report or URL count for citation rate.
How to use Bing’s AI Citation Metrics
Bing’s move sets a precedent. It’s the first time a major search platform has treated AI citations as a separate, trackable metric instead of wrapping them into standard search performance data.
For SEOs, this report offers several practical opportunities:
- Compare your top cited pages with your top traffic pages: They may not be the same. Pages that rank well in regular search are not the ones that are indexed by AI programs. Look at what your most cited pages have in common: structure, depth, how the claims are supported, and how recently they’ve been updated. Those patterns tell you what AI systems value for your site specifically.
- Use basic questions to find content gaps: The basic queries report shows the phrases the AI used to retrieve your content. If those phrases don’t match the topics you’re intentionally targeting, you’re probably being quoted haphazardly instead of using strategy. If you see basic questions related to the topics you’re covering but certain pages aren’t mentioned, that’s a sign to improve the structure, add supporting evidence, or update outdated information on those pages.
- Compare cited versus indexed-but-not-indexed pages: If a page is indexed but never appears in the citation data, it may not have been created or validated enough for AI systems to reference it. Start with the basics: clear topics, evidence-backed claims, and up-to-date information.
- Set the base: The report includes time series data from the first day. Log in, post your current numbers, and track changes over time so you can measure the impact of any adjustments you make.
Geertrui Laleman, senior AI search development specialist at Semrush, analyzed basic query data and found that 39% of queries used to support AI answers were conversational questions or long phrases with many words.
“While over time, natural language queries have increased in AI-driven searches, this shows that the same pattern is carrying over to the validation phase,” Laleman said. “With our content strategy, that means making sure our pages include clear, specific answers to these long-standing questions, not just to satisfy users, but to serve as a trusted source for AI itself.”
Further reading: How to prepare for AI search results in 2026
Microsoft billed the launch as the first step toward GEO tools, and the SEO community has responded strongly by calling on Google to follow suit.
How the SEO Community Responds
The response has been very positive, with many discussions focusing on differences with Google reporting.
Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush, noted on LinkedIn that citations were generated by basic queries, page rank visibility, and time series data from day one “puts this ahead of anything we’ve seen on Google to date.”
Wil Reynolds, founder and vice president of innovation at Seer Interactive, confirmed that the basic questions feature is live, posting on X: “Bing now offers you basic questions in Bing Webmaster Tools!! Just confirmed, now I have to understand what we get from them, what it means and how to use it.”
Nikki Pilkington, an SEO consultant and SEO content expert, put the Google comparison bluntly in a LinkedIn post: “Google Search Console: We’ve given users a new favicon and custom quotes. Bing Webmaster Tools: Grab my beer…”
Main pushback is available. The AI features of Copilot and Bing serve a fraction of the users that Google and ChatGPT do, so the data shows a small slice of AI search behavior. That’s a valid limit, but it’s also the only first-party AI citation data currently available.
Track AI Visibility Beyond Bing
Bing’s report covers Microsoft’s ecosystem. To see how your product is appearing across all AI search platforms comprehensively, use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.
The Visibility Overview Dashboard shows where you are showing up in AI results, where your competitors are showing up but you aren’t, and which LLM referral sources are.
The Product Performance Dashboard provides specific recommendations to improve the visibility of your AI based on your current data.
Start with Bing’s citation data to understand what’s working for your site. Then use the AI Visibility Toolkit to see how that translates to the broader AI search landscape.
