--- title: "Bing reports how often AI answers cite your pages" url: https://surfil.com/news/bing-ai-performance-citations section: news language: en 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 Bing "respects all content owner preferences expressed through robots.txt and other supported control mechanisms," so a page you have blocked should not be cited, 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. Microsoft calls this the first time site owners can see how often their content is cited in generative answers, though it only covers Microsoft's surfaces: Google's documentation counts AI feature traffic in the Search Console Performance report instead, and the two do not add together. ## Common questions ### Does Google offer the same thing? Not in this form. Google's documentation says traffic from AI features is counted in the Search Console Performance report under the "Web" search type, and it describes no separate citation metric. The two are different measurements. ### 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)