Bing AI Performance Report: How to Report Copilot Citation Share Honestly

A client sees "citation share" in Bing Webmaster Tools, reads it as market share, and asks why a competitor is beating them in Copilot. The report cannot answer that question, because it never shows competitors. Agencies now have a first-party count of how often Microsoft's AI answers cite a client's pages, and the risk is reporting it as something it is not.

This guide explains what the Bing AI Performance report measures, what Microsoft says it does not measure, and how to put it in a client report without overselling it.

What is the Bing AI Performance report?

The Bing AI Performance report is a Bing Webmaster Tools report, in public preview since 10 February 2026, that shows how often a site's content is cited as a source in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Microsoft's launch post lists five views:

• Total Citations: how many times the site's content was shown as a source in AI answers.
• Average Cited Pages: the daily average of unique pages from the site that were cited.
• Grounding queries: the key phrases the AI used when it retrieved the content it cited.
• Page-level citation activity: citation counts for each URL.
• Visibility trends over time: a timeline of citation activity.

Two caveats from the same post belong in every client report. The data "represents a sample of overall citation activity". And none of these metrics show placement, ranking or how important a page was inside an answer. A citation is a count, not a position.

What did the June update add?

On 16 June 2026, Microsoft added four features to the report: Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare, all in preview and rolling out globally. The announcement describes them this way:

• Intents sorts grounding queries into broad categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Research and Local.
• Topics groups related grounding queries into themes, so "solar panels" and "residential solar installation" can sit under one topic.
• Citation Share shows how much of the citation space a site gets for a single grounding query.
• Compare overlays an earlier period on the current one: the previous 30 days, or a custom range.

Microsoft also says Intents and Topics rely on machine learning classification that is still evolving, so labels may be broad, especially in niche industries during the preview.

What does citation share mean in Bing Webmaster Tools?

Citation share is the percentage of all citations shown for a grounding query that went to your site, counted across every site cited for that same query. If Copilot cited ten sources across the answers for one grounding query and three were your client's pages, the share is 30%.

Microsoft is direct about what it is not. The post calls it an "observational metric", not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard. It does not reveal which other domains were cited, it does not represent traffic share, and it does not score content quality. That rules out the most tempting slide in the deck: "We hold 30% of Copilot for our category." The honest version is "For the grounding queries Bing shows us, 30% of citations went to our pages."

What does the report not tell you?

The Bing AI Performance report does not tell you clicks, traffic, competitors or position, and its numbers are a sample. Neither Microsoft post describes click or visit data. So a rising citation count says the content is being used as a source more often; it does not say anyone visited.

Microsoft also lists what can move citation numbers: model changes, competing content, freshness signals and shifts in demand. Some of those the agency controls; most it does not. A month-over-month drop is a reason to look, not proof that something broke.

How should agencies report Copilot citations to clients?

Agencies should report Copilot citations at topic level, split by intent, compared month over month, labelled as a sample, and paired with outcome data from analytics. In practice that means six rules:

1. Lead with topics, not queries. Grounding queries are long and generalised. Three to five topics the client recognises ("solar installation", "panel costs") read better than a list of fifty phrases.
2. Split by intent. Commercial and Local citations matter more to a lead-generation client than Informational ones. Show the mix, and say which part maps to revenue.
3. Use Compare for the trend. Current 30 days against the previous 30 is the cleanest monthly view, and it avoids hand-built comparisons.
4. Label it a sample. One line under the chart: "Microsoft sample of citation activity, preview feature."
5. Get competitors elsewhere. Because citation share hides other domains, track a fixed set of prompts across AI engines and record which brands are named. An AI visibility tracking tool does this for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
6. Take outcomes from GA4. Visits and conversions from Copilot show up in analytics, not in Bing. Our guide to AI referral traffic in GA4 covers how those sessions are grouped.

What goes in a one-page Copilot section?

A one-page Copilot section needs five rows: citations, top topics, citation share on the queries that matter, the most cited pages, and the outcomes those citations produced.

Keep the section short and next to Google's AI data, so the client sees AI search as one channel with several engines. Our monthly marketing report template shows where a section like this fits, and SEO KPIs that prove work covers which numbers should lead the report.

What should you do when citation share falls?

When citation share falls, check the page-level citations first, then work through the content signals Microsoft itself recommends. The launch post suggests deeper coverage of related topics; clear structure with headings, tables and FAQ sections; claims backed by examples, data and sources; fresh content; consistency between text, images and video; IndexNow to tell search engines about changes; and, for local businesses, an up-to-date Bing Places for Business listing.

Write the action into the next report with a date, then use Compare a month later to see whether the topic recovered. If it did not, say so. A client who sees the agency report an honest flat month will trust the next good one.

One more point for clients deciding about Google: excluding a site from Google's AI answers does nothing to Copilot, and the reverse is true too. Our post on Google's AI Overviews opt-out covers that switch. An SEO reporting tool keeps Search Console, GA4 and AI visibility in one place so the engines can be compared side by side.

Bing AI Performance report FAQ

What is citation share in Bing Webmaster Tools?

Citation share is the percentage of all citations shown for a grounding query that went to your site. Microsoft calls it an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard.

Does the Bing AI Performance report show clicks or traffic?

No. The report counts citations and cited pages. Microsoft says citation share does not represent traffic share, so visits and conversions from Copilot have to come from your analytics, such as GA4.

Which AI surfaces does the Bing AI Performance report cover?

Microsoft says it covers citations in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Microsoft has not named the partners, so do not treat it as a measure of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews.

Can I see which competitors are cited in Bing's AI answers?

No. Microsoft says citation share does not expose competitor domains. To show a client who else gets named, track a fixed set of prompts across AI engines and record which brands appear.

Is the Bing AI Performance data complete?

No. Microsoft says the data shown represents a sample of overall citation activity, and the June features are in preview. Report trends and shares, and label the numbers as a sample.