The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts how often Microsoft's AI answers cite your pages as sources. It covers Microsoft Copilot, AI generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It shows Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, a sample of grounding queries and the citations of each page. Microsoft introduced it as a public preview on February 10, 2026 (Bing Webmaster Blog).
This report is the one place where Microsoft itself tells you that its AI answers used your pages. I trust it more than any screenshot of a chat, since it comes from the system that did the citing. Microsoft labels the grounding queries a sample, so the list shows which queries led to a citation, not how often each one did.
What the report shows
Microsoft's February 2026 post names five parts of the dashboard. Its June 16, 2026 post adds four more, all in preview. The names below are Microsoft's.
| Name | What Microsoft says it shows | What it does not show |
|---|---|---|
| Total Citations | How many times your content was displayed as a source in AI generated answers in the time frame. | Placement or presentation inside an answer. |
| Average Cited Pages | The average number of unique pages from your site cited per day. | Ranking, authority or the role of a page in an answer. |
| Grounding queries | The key phrases the AI used when it retrieved content that was then cited. | The full list. Microsoft calls it a sample. |
| Page level citation activity | Citation counts for each URL on your site. | Page importance, ranking or placement. |
| Visibility trends over time | How citation activity changes over the period. | Why it changed. |
| Intents (preview) | Grounding queries grouped into classes such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Learn and Solve, Research, Creation and Local. | Exact labels for niche subjects, which Microsoft says may stay broad in preview. |
| Topics (preview) | Grounding queries grouped into themes. | Individual queries. |
| Citation Share (preview) | The percentage of all citations shown for a grounding query that point to your site. | Competitor domains, traffic share or a quality score. |
| Compare (preview) | A previous period laid over the current one. | The cause of a change. |
Before you start
- You need your site verified in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Bingbot has to be able to reach your pages. Microsoft says Bing respects the preferences site owners express in robots.txt and its other supported controls, so a block there also keeps your pages out of this report. If your firewall treats a request as Bingbot, check its IP address with Microsoft's Verify Bingbot tool before you allow or block it.
- Bing has to have the current version of each page. Microsoft's February post recommends IndexNow to tell search engines when content is added, updated or removed. Our own daily routine submits new and changed pages of visibilitymesh.com through URL submission in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Steps
Step 1. Open AI Performance
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, choose the site and open AI Performance. I could not find an official page that says where the entry sits in the menu, so look for the name AI Performance. The Sources list explains why.
Step 2. Set the date range and read the two totals
Pick a date range. Read Total Citations first, then Average Cited Pages. Total Citations counts appearances as a source. Average Cited Pages tells you how many different pages carry that load on an average day. A high total with a low average means a few pages do the work for the whole site.
Step 3. Open the grounding queries
Grounding queries are the phrases the AI used to look up the content it then cited. Treat them like the query log of a service account. They record what the system asked for, which is not always what the person typed. Microsoft says the list is a sample of overall citation activity, so a missing phrase proves nothing.
Step 4. Open the citations by page
The page level view counts citations for each URL. Look for two things: pages you expected and do not see, and pages you forgot you had. Both need a decision. An old page that Copilot keeps citing is a page you now have to keep accurate.
Step 5. Use the preview features if your account has them
Microsoft began rolling out Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare globally on June 16, 2026. Intents classifies grounding queries, for example as Informational or Commercial. Topics groups them into themes. Citation Share gives your part of all citations for one grounding query. Compare overlays an earlier period, such as the previous 30 days. I could not confirm on September 26, 2026, whether these features still carry a preview label.
Step 6. Record the month
Write down the date range, Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, the five most cited pages and the five grounding queries that appear most. Keep the same range each month, since a changed window makes two months hard to compare.
Check that it worked
The most cited pages should make sense to you. If a page you retired years ago leads the list, the report is working and your site has a problem. Then put the month's citations next to visits from Copilot in your analytics. Google Analytics names Copilot among the sources of its AI Assistant channel (Default channel group). Expect fewer visits than citations, since a reader can take the answer and never open the source.
If it did not work
- If the report is empty, check that the site is verified and that robots.txt and your CDN let Bingbot in. Microsoft does not publish a minimum amount of data, so a small site may have no citations yet.
- If citations were read as clicks, note that Microsoft's posts list no click metric for this report.
- If Citation Share was read as a ranking, note that Microsoft calls it an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard.
- If the grounding queries were treated as the full list, note that Microsoft calls them a sample.
- If the numbers changed between two months and you want to know why, start with Microsoft's own list. It names changing models, freshness, competing content and user demand among the reasons citation activity shifts. Compare shows the change, and your own change log has to supply the reason.
Platform notes
The report works the same way for any website that Bing can crawl. The platform matters only for access. Check robots.txt, your CDN and any bot protection for Bingbot, whatever your site runs on. The controls that limit how Copilot uses a page are covered in our guide The Front Door Test: Can AI Crawlers Even Get Into Your Store?
What Visibility Mesh checks and what it does not
Visibility Mesh does not read your Bing Webmaster Tools account. Our scan reads each page as it is served and checks, one name at a time, whether eight crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity are allowed in. It does not test Bingbot today, so run that check yourself with the steps above. We built the scan to answer whether AI crawlers can read a page at all. This report answers whether Microsoft cited it.
Questions people ask
What are grounding queries in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Grounding queries are the key phrases Microsoft's AI used when it retrieved content from your site that was then cited in an AI generated answer. Microsoft says the list is a sample of overall citation activity, not every query. Since June 16, 2026, the report can also group them into Intents, such as Informational or Commercial, and into Topics. Read them as the searches the system ran to find sources, which are not necessarily what a person typed.
What is Citation Share in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Citation Share is the percentage of all citations shown for one grounding query that point to your site. Microsoft added it in preview on June 16, 2026. Microsoft calls it an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard. It does not expose competitor domains, represent traffic share or score content quality. Read it as a trend for your own site on the queries that matter to you.
Does the Bing AI Performance report show clicks or ChatGPT citations?
Microsoft's posts describe neither. The report counts citations: how often your pages are shown as sources in Microsoft Copilot, AI generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Microsoft does not name the partners, so you cannot assume ChatGPT is included. The metrics listed are Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, grounding queries, citations by page and a trend, with no clicks. For visits from Copilot, use your analytics.
Sources
- Microsoft, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview, Bing Webmaster Blog, February 10, 2026; read September 26, 2026.
- Microsoft, New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare, Bing Search Blog, June 16, 2026; read September 26, 2026.
- Microsoft, Elevating the Role of Grounding on the AI Web, Bing Search Blog, February 13, 2026; read September 26, 2026.
- Microsoft, Verify Bingbot, Bing Webmaster toolbox; opened September 26, 2026.
- Microsoft, AI Performance FAQs, Bing Webmaster Tools help, linked from the June 16, 2026 post. Bing's help pages load as a script application, and on September 26, 2026, this one returned an empty page to us, so nothing here relies on it.
- Google, Default channel group, Analytics Help. No update date is shown; read September 26, 2026.
This guide is one part of how to measure AI visibility. The Google side is in how to see AI Overviews and AI Mode performance in Search Console, and visits are in tracking AI traffic in Google Analytics. For what to do with the numbers, read whether AI visibility pays off.
Work through the six checks in How to check if AI can read your website, or hand them to your developer.
If Copilot cites the wrong pages or none at all, tell us what's not working. Describe the problem in your own words, and a person will reply within one business day.