Bing Webmaster Tools has recently introduced the AI Performance report, providing new insights into how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations.
The report provides how often your website content is cited in generative answers, while showing which URLs are referenced and how citation activity changes over time.
This new release helps publishers and businesses understand how their content participates in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and overall in AI-driven experiences.
What the Report Measures
Total Citations
Shows the total number of citations that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers during the selected time frame. This shows how often your content is referenced by AI systems, without indicating placement or presentation within a specific answer. The Total Citations metric won’t specify:
- Whether it was the main source or a minor reference
- Whether it appeared at the top or bottom
- How prominently it was shown
- How much of your content was used
Average Cited Pages
Average Cited Pages is the average number of unique pages cited per day during the selected date range.
Grounding Queries
“Grounding queries” are the search phrases the AI system used behind the scenes to find content it later cited in an AI-generated answer.
In simpler terms, this report shows what the AI searched for when it decided to cite your content.
Limitations:
- It’s only a partial view.
- It may not be fully complete or stable yet.
Page-Level Citation Activity
Shows how many times each page on your website was cited in AI-generated answers during the selected time period.
It tells you how often a page was referenced but not how important it is, how highly it ranks, or where it appeared in the AI response.
This chart shows how often your site was cited in AI-generated answers over time. It helps you quickly see whether citations are increasing, decreasing, or staying the same.
Using AI Performance Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools
AI Performance insights help you understand how visible your content is in AI-generated answers by showing which pages are cited and what search phrases the AI used.
These insights can help you:
- See which pages are already being referenced in AI answers
- Find out which content is cited most often
- Identify pages that could be improved if they are indexed but rarely cited
