Recently, Bing has taken an exciting step forward by launching a public preview of its AI performance report within Bing Webmaster Tools. This feature is now accessible to all users and aims to enhance how publishers understand their content’s performance in the AI landscape.
Additionally, Bing Webmaster Tools sports a sleek new design that is both appealing and user-friendly.
Microsoft’s Krishna Madhavan, Meenaz Merchant, Fabrice Canel, and Saral Nigam announced:
We are thrilled to unveil AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools. This new set of insights allows publishers to see how their content is represented across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and selected partner platforms. For the first time, you can gauge how often your content is referenced in generative responses, with clear indications of which URLs are cited and how this activity evolves over time.
Now, you can view this report firsthand at bing.com/webmasters/aiperformance. Here’s a screenshot:
This dashboard provides several key metrics:
- Total Citations: Displays the overall number of times your content is cited as a source in AI-generated answers during the selected timeframe. It highlights the frequency of your content’s references without indicating its placement in specific answers.
- Average Cited Pages: Shows the average number of unique pages from your site referenced in AI-generated answers daily, over the selected time frame. This metric reflects content citation patterns without implying ranking or authority.
- Grounding Queries: Indicates the key phrases used by AI when pulling in referenced content. This data is a sample of overall citation activity and will be refined in future updates.
- Page-Level Citation Activity: Breaks down citations for specific URLs, allowing you to identify which pages are most frequently referenced in AI responses over the selected timeframe. This metric reflects citation frequency, but not the importance of the pages.
- Visibility Trends Over Time: A timeline illustrating how citation activity for your site fluctuates over time across supported AI experiences, making it easier to recognize trends at a glance.
However, it’s important to note that click data is not included, as mentioned previously.
The grounding queries feature has caused some confusion, as these do not necessarily reflect actual user searches but are likely what Bing uses to retrieve content for AI-generated responses. Thus, Copilot might take a lengthy query and break it into shorter phrases. Bing is still refining this metric.
As for API integration, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft mentioned on X, “Currently, the data is not available via the API. Adding API access is on our backlog, and we’ll consider your feedback when prioritizing future releases.”
He also indicated that this is just a preview, stating, “You will receive more insights in 2026.”
Industry reactions have been enthusiastic:
OK, they are rolling it out. Here’s the announcement: Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview https://t.co/EzAHpsB1a5 pic.twitter.com/rfsnXkvwG8
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 10, 2026
Bing is now giving you grounding queries in Bing Webmaster tools!! Just confirmed, now I gotta understand what we’re getting from them, what it means and how to use it. https://t.co/FvKwtjoM2D
Great work @facan and team. I remember when @rustybrick showed that this might be… pic.twitter.com/6QDmsvWmiq
— Wil Reynolds (@wilreynolds) February 10, 2026
We’re excited to share new insights that bring more transparency to the web ecosystem. Publishers can now see how their content shows up in the AI era URLs, grounding queries, and page-level performance.
GEO meets SEO, power your strategy with real signalshttps://t.co/0qD1WGwrHn https://t.co/FFRAnZkWRC— Fabrice Canel (@facan) February 10, 2026
Getting our first look at real 1st party AI performance data from Bing/CoPilot.
I really hope Google / GPT follows. We need this sort of reporting.https://t.co/YTUFvXLFUW
I just wish Bing/CoPilot actually had users like Google / GPT. pic.twitter.com/mImkWJJKTT
— imnotadoctor (@imnotadoctor) February 10, 2026
🚨 Microsoft is Introducing AI Performance in @bing Webmaster Tools: A new set of insights that shows how sites content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations 👇
This is the first official AI search visibility… pic.twitter.com/35aRoLVSbD
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) February 10, 2026
Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools has always been more useful and efficient than Google Search Console, and once again, they’ve proven their commitment to transparency.
Microsoft Bing has just launched the AI Performance Dashboard, which introduces “citations” and “cited pages”… pic.twitter.com/hcMOhncW1G
— Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR (@KorayGubur) February 10, 2026
Google Search Console : We’ve given users a new favicon and custom citations.
Bing Webmaster Tools: Hold my beer… https://t.co/dfn1pJpkzQ
— Nikki Pilkington – non-wanky SEO (@NikkiPilkington) February 11, 2026
For further discussions, you can visit X.
In summary, the new AI performance report from Bing offers invaluable insights into how publisher content is viewed and referenced across various AI applications. As this tool continues to develop, it promises to enhance transparency and provide essential metrics for content creators to optimize their strategies in an evolving digital landscape. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements from Bing in the future.
