In short. Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows reported citations, cited pages, grounding queries, and citation trends across supported AI experiences.
Definition: As of 17 October 2026, AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools reports visible citations of a site's content across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations. A citation is a reference to content displayed as a source in an AI answer.
Key facts
- Bing's launch announcement defines Total Citations as source appearances during the selected period.
- The AI Performance documentation defines Average Cited Pages as the average number of unique pages cited per day over that period.
- Bing's expanded reporting announcement defines Citation Share as a site's percentage of citations across all sites for a specific grounding query, a phrase used to retrieve supporting content.
- Bing's Topics Portfolio announcement describes a beta view of thematic query clusters, available when a site has sufficient data.
How is the report accessed?
Bing's getting-started instructions direct site owners to sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and open AI Performance for their site. The report path is:
Bing Webmaster Tools > [site] > AI Performance
The same announcement places Topics Portfolio next to Citations & Pages when sufficient data is available. Its topic table includes Topic Size, Sites Cited, and Queries. These are approximate measures of total citations across sites, participating sites, and distinct grounding queries within a topic.
How are page and query counts read?
Bing's AI Performance help offers 7-day, 30-day, three-month, and custom date ranges within available history. Data refreshes daily with a processing delay.
Grounding queries are grouped phrases associated with content retrieval. Selecting a query filters the report to its cited pages; selecting a page shows its associated queries. Exports reflect the active filter and are available in CSV and Excel formats.
The launch documentation explains that page-level citation counts identify the URLs referenced most frequently during the selected period. These counts describe citation frequency; the average cited-page metric describes daily breadth across unique URLs. The timeline shows how citation activity changes across supported experiences.
What do the newer metrics add?
Bing's expanded reporting documentation describes Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare as preview capabilities. Intents classify queries into categories such as Informational and Commercial. Topics group related phrases into broader subjects: Bing gives solar-related queries grouped under Solar Energy as an example.
Citation Share measures relative citation presence for a query. It provides an observational percentage rather than a traffic share or content quality score. Compare overlays a previous period on the current reporting view, with an option for custom ranges. Changes can reflect user demand, model changes, content freshness, or partner refresh cycles, so comparisons support observation without establishing causation.
Related terms
FAQ
Do the citation counts measure visits to my site?
No. Bing's AI Performance FAQ defines a citation as a visible reference or source appearance in an answer. Visits and engagement require separate measurement.
Why can totals differ between views?
The same FAQ describes sampled data, with potentially different sampling windows for pages and grounding queries. Your filtered query and page counts can therefore differ within the selected reporting period.
Sources
- Microsoft Bing, "AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools", undated, documentation content
- Microsoft Bing, "Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview", 10 February 2026
- Microsoft Bing, "New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare", 16 June 2026
- Microsoft Bing, "Introducing Topics Portfolio (Beta) in AI Performance", 13 October 2026
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