AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Bing now answer questions directly by pulling from multiple websites. Your content might be shaping those answers right now. Or it might not appear at all.
Bing’s AI Performance report (free for verified site owners through Bing Webmaster Tools) is the only dedicated AI citation tool from a major search platform. It shows which pages are being cited, how often, and why. Understanding how AI systems cite your content is becoming a critical part of modern SEO strategy.
This guide walks you through setup, how to read the data, and what to do next.
Is this guide for you?
It’s written for:
- Small and mid-sized businesses that want to understand how AI search is affecting their visibility.
- Marketing teams and agencies adding AI citation tracking to client reporting.
- Anyone already doing SEO who wants to understand AI citations as a layer on top of traditional search rankings.
If you’re not sure whether your site is already in Bing Webmaster Tools, start at Step 1. If you know you’re verified, skip to Step 2.
Step 1 — Get your site into Bing Webmaster Tools
The AI Performance report lives inside Bing Webmaster Tools, a free platform Microsoft provides for site owners. Your site needs to be verified there before any data appears. Verification is a one-time setup that takes about ten minutes and just means proving to Bing that you own or manage the site.
Already verified? If your site is in Bing Webmaster Tools and showing data, skip to Step 2.
Go to webmaster.bing.com and sign in with a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account (free to create). Add your site as a property by entering your domain. Bing will ask you to verify ownership. The most common options are a meta tag added to your homepage, a file uploaded to your server, or a DNS record. The meta tag method is usually fastest: copy the tag Bing provides, paste it into your site’s header, and click Verify. Most website platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix have a dedicated field for this.
Once verified, give it 48–72 hours before checking the AI Performance report. Data needs time to populate.
Shortcut: import from Google Search Console
If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools has a direct import option that copies your property settings across in one step. Look for the “Import from Google Search Console” option after signing in. It pulls your verified property and can speed up the whole setup significantly, especially useful if you manage multiple sites.
Step 2 — Find the AI Performance report
Once your site is verified and data has started coming in, finding the report is straightforward.
- Log in at webmaster.bing.com.
- Select your website if you manage more than one property.
- Click AI Performance in the left-hand navigation.
The report defaults to the last seven days. Switch to a 30- or 90-day window using the date filter at the top. A longer window smooths out day-to-day variation and makes it easier to spot trends, especially on your first review.
Quick tip: Use a 90-day window for your first review. Once you’re checking monthly, a 28–30 day view works well for tracking progress.
Step 3 — Read the metrics
The report tracks four things. Here’s what each one means and what to watch for.
Total citations
What it is: How many times your site was referenced as a source in AI-generated answers during the selected period.
Why it matters: It’s your baseline. Bing notes this doesn’t show placement, just that your content was used. A rising number suggests your content is connecting with more queries. Flat or zero means something isn’t landing.
What to watch: The trend matters more than the raw number. If citations go up after you update a page, that’s a signal the change worked.
Average cited pages
What it is: The average number of your pages cited per day during the selected period.
Why it matters: If most citations come from one or two pages, consider whether you’re building depth across your site on related topics.
What to watch: Whether the new pages you’ve invested in start showing up over time.
Grounding queries
What they are: Before an AI generates an answer, it runs background searches to find and verify sources. The phrases it uses are called grounding queries. Bing shows you a sample of this activity.
Why they matter: These are the actual questions your pages are answering. These are the actual questions your pages are answering. They often don’t match the keywords you’ve been targeting in traditional SEO, which is why this data is so valuable.
What to watch: Queries that match your core services are opportunities to strengthen. Queries you don’t recognize point to content gaps, topics users are asking about that your site isn’t clearly answering yet.
Page-level citation activity
What it is: A breakdown of which specific URLs are being cited, how often, and whether that’s changing over time. Bing notes this shows frequency, not importance or placement within answers.
Why it matters: This is where the data becomes actionable. You can see which pages are earning citations and which ones have dropped off. Pages that fade are often outdated, or a competitor has published something more thorough.
What to watch: Core service pages or location pages that should logically be cited but aren’t. Those are the first candidates for improvement.
Step 4 — Turn grounding queries into a content to-do list
Grounding queries are the most useful data in the report. Here’s how to act on them.
Match queries to your existing pages
Copy your grounding queries and put them next to a list of your key pages. For each query, ask: Does a page on your site clearly and directly answer this? “Clearly” means the answer is easy to find, near the top of the page, under a heading that signals the topic. “Directly” means the page actually addresses the question, not just the general subject area.
A query that matches an existing page that isn’t answering it well is an update. A query that doesn’t match anything you have is a new page candidate.
Update or create: a simple rule
Update an existing page when the query is a close match to what that page already covers. Create a new page when the query reflects a clearly different topic or intent. One caution: avoid creating many thin pages on adjacent topics. A single well-developed page that thoroughly covers a subject tends to earn more AI citations than several short pages that each address a narrow slice of the same thing.
Think in clusters, not just keywords
Grounding queries often reveal something useful about how the AI understands your site. If you’re being cited for several variations of the same question, that suggests the AI associates your site with that topic. Strengthening those pages tends to increase citation frequency for all of them.
The reverse is also true: if you see isolated citations that don’t cluster around anything, your site may be getting pulled in occasionally rather than recognized as having depth on the topic. That’s a signal to build more in one area rather than spreading effort thin.
Make pages easier for AI and people to use
The content improvements that help AI citation are the same ones that help human readers. When updating a page, focus on:
- Headings that reflect how customers phrase questions, not just industry terminology.
- A short, direct answer near the top of the page before going into detail.
- Short paragraphs and clear structure that make key points easy to pull out.
- Current details like pricing ranges, locations, and process descriptions. Outdated specifics are one of the most common reasons a page drops out of AI citations.
These content optimizations align with what works for both AI citations and organic search rankings.
After you update a page: Submit it to Bing using IndexNow so it gets recrawled quickly rather than waiting for Bing to find the changes on its own. The IndexNow tool is built into Bing Webmaster Tools. One click, and Bing knows to come back.
Step 5 — Track it like a KPI
The AI Performance report is most useful as a regular part of your marketing reporting. Here’s how to make that practical.
A simple monthly snapshot
Once a month, record four things:
- Total citations for the month.
- Number of cited pages.
- Top five cited URLs.
- Two or three grounding queries most relevant to your core services.
Keep these in a spreadsheet or add a slide to your existing marketing report. You’re looking for steady improvement, not big jumps. AI citation authority builds the same way search authority does: gradually, through consistent content work.
Connect it to your other numbers
AI citations don’t always produce direct clicks, because AI answers don’t always include links. But businesses that earn consistent citations tend to see connected effects over time: more branded searches, higher-quality inbound leads, and contacts who already have context about what you do before they reach out. For businesses running paid search campaigns, AI citation data can reveal gaps in your organic visibility that paid ads are currently filling. As a result, you can identify strategic opportunities to shift budget from PPC to content development.
One more tool worth connecting: Microsoft Clarity
Bing Webmaster Tools integrates directly with Microsoft Clarity, a free tool that shows you how visitors actually behave on your pages: heatmaps, scroll depth, click patterns, and session recordings. This matters because cited pages need to hold attention when readers click through. Improving on-page engagement is a key component of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, as it affects everything from SEO to conversion rates. If your cited pages have high bounce rates or low engagement, that’s a signal the content isn’t delivering on what it promises. Clarity helps you spot that without guessing.
Want a partner to watch this for you?
Working through this report once is a useful starting point. Making it part of how you operate is where the real value builds.
If you’d rather have an experienced team handle that, contact Digital Marketing Charlotte today to schedule a free visibility audit. We work with businesses across the region to develop AI citation strategies as part of a unified SEO and content strategy, rather than as a separate project. Start now, before your competitors even realize they need one.
