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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report measures how often your pages are cited as sources in AI-generated answers. It does not replace ordinary search-performance data, reveal a conventional ranking position, or report traffic directly. Microsoft introduced the report as a public preview on February 10, 2026, covering Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and selected partner integrations.
Read it as an observational visibility report: identify which URLs and subjects AI systems already use, understand the kinds of questions that lead to those citations, and test content improvements over time without treating any single metric as proof of causation.
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What the AI Performance report measures
The report records observed source use in supported AI answers. When an AI answer displays a citation to a page on your site, Bing Webmaster Tools can count that event for the selected period. The data is aggregated across supported AI experiences, so it describes your site’s presence in an AI citation ecosystem rather than a single search-results page.
This distinction matters because a page can be cited without receiving a click, appearing first in conventional Bing results, or generating measurable visits. Conversely, a page can attract search traffic while never appearing among the sources that the supported AI systems show.
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- Included surfaces: Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and selected partner integrations.
- Report status: AI Performance was introduced as a public preview on February 10, 2026.
- What it is not: a replacement for Search Performance, a universal AI-visibility index, a traffic report, or a conventional ranking report.
How to read the original dashboard metrics
Start with the metric definitions before drawing conclusions. Each number answers a different question and has a specific limitation.
| Metric | What it counts or shows | How to use it | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Citations | The number of citations displayed as sources in AI-generated answers during the selected date range. | Measure the volume of observed references to your site and find periods that deserve investigation. | It does not show citation position within an answer, conventional search rank, clicks, or revenue. |
| Average Cited Pages | The average number of unique pages from your site displayed as sources per day over the selected period. | See whether citation activity is concentrated on a few URLs or spread across more of your site. | It does not indicate authority, ranking, or the role a page played in any individual answer. |
| Grounding Queries | A sample of phrases used when AI retrieved content that was later referenced. | Discover the language and needs associated with citations, then check whether your pages answer those needs directly. | It is not a complete query export, a complete demand forecast, or a list of every prompt that caused a citation. |
| Page-level citation activity | Citation counts for individual URLs. | Find pages already functioning as references and compare them with indexed pages cited less often. | A high count does not establish that a page is the best page for every related query. |
| Visibility trends | A timeline of citation activity across supported AI experiences. | Spot sustained increases, decreases, or unusual dates for deeper analysis. | A change on the chart alone does not identify its cause. |
Total Citations: references, not rankings
Microsoft defines Total Citations as the total number of citations displayed as sources in AI-generated answers during the selected time frame. Treat it as an event count. If the number rises, your site was referenced more often in the observed data; it does not mean your pages moved up a ranked list.
Average Cited Pages: breadth of URL coverage
This is a daily average of unique pages from your site that appeared as sources. A higher value can mean that more URLs are being used, while a low value can mean that citation activity is concentrated in a small set of pages. Neither pattern is automatically better: a specialist site may quite reasonably have a few authoritative reference pages.
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Grounding queries are the phrases associated with retrieval that led to a later citation. Microsoft describes them as a sample of overall citation activity. Use them directionally to identify wording, intent, and subject gaps; do not treat them as a full record of user demand.
Page-level activity: locate the pages doing the work
Sort or review individual URLs to identify repeated citations. Check what those pages have in common—clear definitions, evidence, complete procedures, structured headings, tables, frequently asked questions, or recent update dates—then use the findings as hypotheses for improving less-cited indexed pages.
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Visibility trends: timing before explanation
The timeline is useful for finding when something changed. It cannot tell you why. Record the dates of major edits, launches, removals, seasonal events, and technical changes alongside the chart so that later investigation has a reliable timeline.
The four preview additions announced in June 2026
On June 16, 2026, Microsoft announced four globally rolling preview capabilities: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare. Availability can vary while a feature rolls out, so a missing control does not by itself indicate a problem with your site.
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Intents: classify the need behind a citation
Intents groups grounding queries into categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Learn and Solve, Research, Creation, and Local. Use the categories to distinguish the job a cited page is performing. For example, an informational citation may support a definition, while a Learn and Solve citation may support a procedure or troubleshooting answer.
Intent is a planning signal, not a label of page quality. A single URL can serve several intents, and the grouping is based on the sampled grounding phrases rather than every possible user formulation.
Topics: combine related queries into themes
Topics clusters related grounding queries into broader subject areas. This helps reveal where your site is gaining visibility and where your coverage is thin. Review the pages associated with each topic, then ask whether the site has a clear primary resource, supporting explanations, current evidence, and logical links between them.
Citation Share: an observational proportion
Citation Share is the percentage of citations attributed to your site out of all citations shown for the same grounding query. Microsoft explicitly describes it as an observational metric—not a ranking system or competitive scoreboard. It is also not traffic share and not a content-quality score.
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Use Citation Share to understand how often your site appeared among the observed sources for a particular query sample. A change can result from different answer compositions, query mixes, competing sources, model behavior, or the number of citations an answer displays. Do not convert the percentage into a claim that your page outranks another page.
Compare: overlay periods, then investigate
Compare overlays an earlier period on the current view. It is useful for locating changes in citations, cited URLs, intents, topics, or Citation Share. It does not prove that a particular edit caused the movement. Microsoft notes that AI citation ecosystems are inherently dynamic.
A reliable workflow for interpreting the report
Use the same process each time so that a short-term fluctuation does not become an unsupported SEO conclusion.
- Choose a consistent date range. Use comparable periods—such as one week against the preceding week or one month against the preceding month—and write down the report date, selected dates, site property, and available AI surfaces.
- Read the trend before the details. Check Total Citations and the visibility timeline for a sustained movement or an isolated spike. A single day is a clue, not a trend.
- Find the URLs with repeated citations. Open page-level activity and record the pages that appear repeatedly. Note whether they are evergreen guides, product or service pages, documentation, local pages, or recently updated articles.
- Group the associated grounding queries. Use Intents and Topics when available. Record the exact wording shown, the broader topic, and the page cited. This exposes mismatches between the language people use and the language your page uses.
- Audit high-citation pages. Check whether the cited page has a direct definition, a clear answer near the top, descriptive headings, evidence or source dates, complete steps, useful tables or FAQs, identifiable entities, and an accurate update date.
- Compare against indexed but lightly cited pages. Select pages that are indexed and relevant but receive few or no observed citations. Compare their structure, evidence, topical coverage, entity clarity, and freshness with the pages that are cited repeatedly.
- Make one controlled change. Improve one meaningful element—such as an unclear definition, missing step, unsupported claim, confusing heading, or stale date—rather than rewriting many variables at once.
- Wait for a later comparable period and use Compare. Record the change date, then review a later period. Treat movement as correlation until you have checked other explanations, including seasonality, demand changes, model changes, competing pages, freshness signals, and partner refresh cycles.
- Keep a change log. Save the date range, cited URLs, grounding-query examples, edits, indexing events, and observed result. This prevents memory-based explanations and makes recurring patterns easier to detect.
How to turn citations into content decisions
When a page has many citations
- Preserve the section that directly answers the cited need; do not make a successful page harder to scan.
- Check whether the page supports the claim with evidence, dates, definitions, examples, or a transparent method.
- Look for adjacent grounding queries that the page almost answers. Add coverage only when it genuinely belongs to the same user need.
- Monitor whether citations come from one topic or several. A broad set of queries may justify supporting pages rather than an oversized single article.
When a page is indexed but rarely cited
- Put the answer or definition in plain language near the beginning.
- Replace vague headings with headings that describe the question or task being solved.
- Fill factual gaps with sourced numbers, dates, requirements, examples, or failure handling.
- Make entities unambiguous: identify the product, version, geography, audience, and time period where those details affect the answer.
- Refresh obsolete instructions and show the date of a substantive update.
- Use tables, ordered steps, and concise FAQs when they make the information easier to retrieve and verify.
When grounding queries reveal a topic you did not target
First decide whether the query is genuinely relevant to your audience. If it is, create or improve a focused page that answers the need instead of forcing unrelated terms into an existing article. If it is not relevant, do not distort the site merely to increase a citation count.
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Why AI visibility changes
A movement in the report can have several simultaneous explanations. Investigate these before assigning credit to an edit:
- Content changes: your page was rewritten, expanded, shortened, redirected, removed, or given a different update date.
- Demand and seasonality: the sampled questions changed because of news, holidays, product cycles, local events, or ordinary fluctuations in interest.
- Model or answer changes: an AI system changed retrieval, answer composition, citation selection, or the number of sources it displays.
- Competing pages: another source became more relevant, more current, more complete, or more accessible for the same need.
- Freshness signals: a recently updated page or newly published source may receive attention while an older page is used less.
- Partner refresh cycles: selected integrations may not update their source sets at the same time as Microsoft’s own experiences.
- Technical discovery and control: robots.txt rules, indexing changes, redirects, outages, or stale versions can affect what systems can retrieve.
Compare can show that two periods differ; it cannot isolate which factor caused the difference. Use your change log, conventional crawl and indexing checks, publication dates, and query-level patterns to narrow the explanation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Robots.txt, indexing and IndexNow
Keep robots.txt and other owner controls intentional. A rule that blocks retrieval or a technical change that removes a page from the index can alter whether the page is available as a source. Review controls when citation activity changes unexpectedly, especially after a migration, template change, or URL cleanup.
Microsoft recommends using IndexNow when pages are added, updated, or removed so participating engines can discover the current version faster. IndexNow is a discovery aid, not a guarantee that a page will be cited. It does not replace sound information architecture, crawl access, indexing eligibility, or useful content.
Common interpretation mistakes
Calling Total Citations a ranking
A citation is a displayed source reference, not a position in conventional search results. Report it as citation volume for the selected period.
Treating Grounding Queries as complete keyword data
The report exposes a sample. Use it to form hypotheses about language and needs, then validate those hypotheses with your broader analytics and editorial knowledge.
Using Citation Share as a league table
Citation Share is calculated for the same grounding-query sample and is explicitly not a competitive ranking, traffic share, or quality grade. Avoid claims such as “we outrank competitors” based solely on this metric.
Attributing every rise or fall to the last edit
AI citation systems change dynamically. Check seasonality, query mix, model behavior, competing pages, freshness, and partner timing before drawing a causal conclusion.
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Optimizing for citations at the expense of readers
Do not add awkward repetition, irrelevant terms, or unsupported claims. The practical improvements Microsoft points to—clear structure, evidence, completeness, and freshness—also make pages easier for people to use.
A compact reporting template
For each review, capture the following fields in a spreadsheet or document:
- Site property and report date
- Current and comparison date ranges
- Total Citations and trend direction
- Average Cited Pages
- Top cited URLs and their citation counts
- Representative grounding queries
- Intent and Topic categories, when available
- Citation Share for the specific query sample, if shown
- Content, technical, seasonal, model, competitor, and partner explanations checked
- One change to test, its implementation date, and the later observation
This record keeps the report in its proper role: a feedback signal for content and discovery decisions, not a promise of rankings or traffic.
Quick Recap
What to remember
- Total Citations counts displayed references in AI answers; it is not search rank or traffic.
- Grounding Queries are sampled retrieval phrases, so they show direction rather than the complete demand set.
- Intents explain the type of need and Topics group related needs into themes.
- Citation Share is an observational percentage for a query sample, not a quality score or competitive position.
- Compare reveals change between periods but cannot prove that one edit caused it.
- Clear structure, evidence, completeness, freshness, and intentional discovery controls are the soundest responses to the signals.
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