Bing Webmaster Tools has introduced AI Performance reporting in public preview, offering new insights into how publisher content is cited across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations. This feature enables publishers to track how often their content is referenced in generative AI answers, which URLs are cited, and how citation activity evolves over time.
Extending Search Insights to AI Answers
AI Performance builds on traditional search insights by showing where and how site content is used as a source in AI-generated answers. This reflects a shift from traditional search visibility focused on blue links to visibility through AI citations, marking an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tools in Bing Webmaster Tools.
AI Performance Dashboard Features
The dashboard consolidates citation data across AI experiences, measuring:
- Total Citations: Number of times content is cited in AI answers within a selected timeframe.
- Average Cited Pages: Average unique pages cited per day, reflecting overall citation patterns.
- Grounding Queries: Key phrases AI used to retrieve referenced content (sample data).
- Page-level Citation Activity: Citation counts for individual URLs, showing which pages are most referenced.
- Visibility Trends Over Time: Timeline of citation activity to spot trends.
Bing respects content owner preferences via robots.txt and other control mechanisms.
Using AI Performance Insights
Publishers can use these insights to:
- Validate which pages are cited in AI answers.
- Identify frequently referenced content.
- Spot opportunities to improve pages that are indexed but less cited.
Improving Content Based on AI Performance
Content improvements guided by AI Performance data include:
- Strengthening depth and expertise by expanding coverage on cited topics.
- Improving structure and clarity with clear headings, tables, and FAQs to aid AI referencing.
- Supporting claims with evidence such as data and cited sources to build trust.
- Keeping content fresh and accurate through regular updates.
- Reducing ambiguity across formats by aligning text, images, and videos consistently.
Further guidance is available on optimizing content for inclusion in AI search answers.
Keeping Content Fresh with IndexNow
IndexNow helps maintain up-to-date content by notifying search engines of additions, updates, or removals, ensuring AI systems reference the latest content versions.
Local Business Information and AI Visibility
Accurate local business information is crucial for AI-generated location-based answers. Businesses can use Bing Places for Business to keep details like address, hours, and contact information current and eligible for AI inclusion.
Evolving AI Performance with the Webmaster Community
AI Performance represents a significant step toward transparency between AI systems and the open web. Bing plans to continue collaborating with publishers and the webmaster community to enhance inclusion, attribution, and visibility across search results and AI experiences, supporting discovery in the next generation of search and AI tools.
