In short. Bing AI Performance measures displayed source references across supported AI experiences and provides query and topic views of citation activity.
Definition: The Bing AI Performance report is a Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard that measures references to a website as a source in supported AI answers. A citation is a displayed source reference.
Key facts
- Bing's public preview announcement, dated 10 February 2026, covers Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations.
- The 16 June 2026 expansion introduces Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare in global preview.
- The 13 October 2026 announcement adds Topics Portfolio in beta, with approximate ecosystem measures.
What do the citation metrics count?
Bing's launch documentation defines Total Citations as source references displayed during the selected period. Average Cited Pages is the daily average of distinct website pages displayed as sources, aggregated across supported AI experiences.
Page-level citation activity counts references to individual URLs. The timeline tracks citation activity over time. These counts describe source appearances; they convey neither a page's ranking nor its placement within an answer.
Grounding queries are the retrieval phrases used to find referenced content. The displayed phrases represent a sample of citation activity.
How do Citation Share and Compare work?
Bing's expanded reporting announcement defines Citation Share as the percentage of citations attributed to a website among all citations across sites for the same grounding query. The denominator is specific to that query. Citation Share measures relative citation presence, and represents neither traffic share nor a content quality score.
Intents classifies grounding queries into categories such as Informational or Commercial. Topics groups related queries into thematic clusters.
Compare overlays an earlier reporting period on the current view, including custom date ranges. Bing gives comparison of the current 30-day period with the previous 30 days as an example. The same announcement identifies model changes, freshness and user demand as influences on citation activity.
What does Topics Portfolio add?
Bing's Topics Portfolio documentation describes these report and tab labels:
AI Performance
Citations & Pages
Topics Portfolio
The portfolio appears when a site has sufficient data. Each topic includes Topic Size, the approximate total citations across sites during the selected period; Sites Cited, the approximate count of participating sites; and Queries, the approximate count of distinct grounding queries.
Topic details separate queries where the website appears from Opportunity Queries, where other sites appear and the website is absent. Opportunity citation volumes use ranges. Bing describes these beta figures as directional planning signals. Topics with insufficient website presence or ecosystem activity are omitted.
Related terms
FAQ
Can I interpret Total Citations as visits?
Bing's launch announcement defines this metric as displayed source references. It counts citation activity rather than website visits.
Can I see competing domains in Citation Share?
Bing's Citation Share documentation states that this metric does not expose competitor domains.
Why might I have no Topics Portfolio tab?
Bing's beta documentation makes visibility dependent on sufficient site presence and ecosystem activity. Smaller sites may have fewer topics or no feature displayed.
Sources
- 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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