Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance (Copilot citations) + import from Search Console
Harvested 26 Oct 2026 (skills harvest). Free. Gives first-party data on when Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI answers cite our pages, which Google does not give at page level.
What the primary sources establish
- Microsoft, 10 Feb 2026 (blogs.bing.com): AI Performance (public preview) shows how often a site is cited in AI answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Metrics: Total citations, Average cited pages per day, Grounding queries (the phrases the AI used when retrieving our content; a sample), page-level citation counts, and a trend line. Bing respects robots.txt choices.
- Microsoft, Jun 2026 (blogs.bing.com): four more preview views: Intents (grounding queries classed as Informational, Research, Learn and Solve, Local, Commercial...), Topics (queries clustered into themes), Citation Share (our presence relative to other cited sources) and Compare (change between periods).
- Microsoft's own improvement advice for pages indexed but rarely cited: clear headings, tables and FAQ sections; examples, data and cited sources; regular updates.
- Bing help (Add and verify site): sites can be imported from Google Search Console, carrying verification and settings; the 2019 Bing post confirms multi-site import in one step.
- Practitioner test (CXL, 2026): "a citation isn't an impression, and neither is automatically a click"; grounding queries are sampled retrieval phrases, not what users typed. Same article: Ahrefs' March 2026 study of 4M Google AI Overview citation URLs found only 37.1% also ranked top-10 organically, i.e. AI citation is a separate visibility channel.
- Practitioner post (Chris Long, LinkedIn, Feb 2026, from its search preview only, not opened): one site with zero Google visibility but strong Bing performance had 90K+ citations. Treat as one anecdote.
The playbook
- Sign in at bing.com with the Google account that owns Search Console; choose Import from Google Search Console; tick the Cedwyn property (and the other estate hosts if wanted). Verification carries over; the sitemap is read from GSC, or submit /sitemap.xml.
- Turn on IndexNow from the same dashboard if not already pinging (tools/index_ping.py already does it from the box).
- Weekly (5 min): AI Performance > last 7 days: total citations, top 10 cited URLs, top grounding queries, Intents mix. Log to the visibility scores.csv.
- For each strong grounding query we are NOT cited for: check the page that should answer it: one dated, sourced statement at the top, a heading that matches the question, a short table (date / record / source) where it fits.
- Use Citation Share/Compare monthly to see whether the Cedwyn framing or outside narratives get cited for the core questions (Tŷ Mawr, Great House Farm Llandough, Buckler, Cedwyn).
How we apply it to Cedwyn
- Fold the weekly numbers into the Monday visibility check (schedule 85e9deca) alongside the Grok questions; it replaces guesswork about whether AI assistants read our site.
- Grounding queries tell us the words people's AI questions use for the place. Feed variants into the names e-book work (/nomenclature/) and the headline-first pages: each headline should be the answer to a real grounding query.
- Page fixes follow the project lead's framing rules: the Williams family as the family of standing; 1824 David Stewart survey as the first record mention of Tŷ Mawr found; 1667 as the family's acquisition (1974 newspaper reports of Mary Williams' statement; ITV News 1988); Bute records never as Tŷ Mawr history before 1824.
- Bing's AI only cites indexed pages: the indexing triage (page-indexing-triage-duplicates-canonicals.md) comes first.
Sources
- blogs.bing.com
- blogs.bing.com
- bing.com
- bing.com
- blogs.bing.com
- cxl.com
Raw Markdown: bing-webmaster-ai-performance-copilot-citations.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json