--- title: "Bing reports how often AI answers cite your pages" url: https://seomadman.com/news/bing-ai-performance-citations section: news published: 2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["AI search", "Search Console"] --- # Bing reports how often AI answers cite your pages ## The short answer Bing Webmaster Tools has a public preview report called AI Performance. It counts how often a site is cited as a source in Copilot and AI-generated answers, shows the average number of cited pages per day, and lists the grounding queries the system used when it retrieved that content. ## Key takeaways - AI Performance entered public preview in Bing Webmaster Tools on 10 February 2026 and reports citations across Copilot, Bing AI answers and select partner integrations. - Total Citations counts how often your content appeared as a source, without saying where in the answer it appeared. - Average Cited Pages reports the mean number of unique pages from your site cited per day over the selected range. - Grounding queries show the phrases the system used to retrieve the content, which is a different question from the phrases a person typed. - Microsoft frames the report as an early step toward generative engine optimisation tooling, so treat the metrics as directional rather than as a ranking readout. Bing Webmaster Tools now answers the question paid tools used to guess at: how often does an AI answer cite your pages. The AI Performance report, in public preview since 10 February 2026, shows citations across Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI-generated answers and, in Microsoft's words, "select partner integrations." ## What it measures **Total Citations.** How often your content was "displayed as sources in AI-generated answers" in the selected period. Microsoft is explicit this says nothing about placement: cited first or cited last count the same. **Average Cited Pages.** The mean number of unique pages from your site cited per day, a breadth measure. It tells you whether a whole section gets used as source material or one page carries everything. **Grounding queries.** The phrases the system used when it retrieved content that ended up referenced, not the question the user actually typed. Microsoft calls it a sample, not a complete list. ![The AI Performance dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools, showing Total Citations, Average Cited Pages and a Grounding Queries list](../../../assets/editorial/bing-ai-performance-dashboard.png) *The AI Performance dashboard, from Microsoft's own announcement. The domain shown is Microsoft's placeholder example, not a real site's data. [Source: Bing Webmaster Blog](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview).* **Robots.txt still applies.** Microsoft says the underlying retrieval "respects robots.txt and other supported control mechanisms," so a page blocked from Bing's crawlers cannot show up in this report, however often an answer would otherwise have used it. Low numbers are worth checking against your [robots.txt](/tools/robots-and-llms-txt-generator) before you read anything else into them. ## How to use it without overreading it **Compare against your own baseline.** Citations against your own impressions, not a competitor's estimate: the absolute count depends on how much AI traffic Bing serves in your market, which you do not control. **Read queries as retrieval language, not keyword research.** If the phrasing that pulls your page is consistently narrower than the topic you thought you covered, that is a content gap worth acting on in [AI search](/topics/ai-search). **Do not forecast traffic from it.** Microsoft's own framing avoids ranking language throughout, and nobody outside the engines can yet map a citation count onto sessions. ## Why we care A page can be the source an AI answer is built from and get zero clicks, a state invisible to every traffic report you already run. This is the first free, first-party number that describes it, even though it only covers Microsoft's surfaces: Google still exposes AI feature performance through Search Console impressions rather than a citation metric, and the two numbers do not add together. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Google offer the same thing? Not in this form. Search Console reports impressions and clicks from AI features on your own property, but it does not count citations as a distinct metric or expose the query the system used to retrieve the page. Those are different measurements and they are not interchangeable. ### What is a grounding query? It is the phrase the AI system used when it retrieved supporting content, which is often a reformulation of what the person actually asked. Microsoft states the data shown is a sample, so treat it as a signal about retrieval phrasing rather than a complete query list. ### Does a citation mean traffic? No. A citation means your page was displayed as a source. Whether anyone clicked it is a separate question, and the citation metric does not answer it. ## Sources 1. [Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview) - Bing Webmaster Blog (primary) 2. [Bing Webmaster Tools](https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about) - Microsoft (primary)