Bing has a free AI citation report and almost no one is using it

What the AI Performance report actually shows

If you sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools today, you'll find a tab called AI Performance sitting in the left sidebar. Bing Webmaster Tools is the free Microsoft dashboard where website owners verify their site and see search reports. Microsoft launched the AI Performance tab on February 10, 2026, as a public preview. Almost no service business has claimed it.

The tab is a free dashboard. A dashboard is a single page that lists the basic numbers about your website. This one lists five:

• Total citations. The count of times an AI answer pointed to your website as a source over the date range you pick.
• Average cited pages. The average number of different pages from your site cited per day over that range. Microsoft says it doesn't measure ranking or how much a page mattered to any one answer.
• Grounding queries. The key phrases the AI searched for when it pulled your content into an answer. Microsoft says what you see is a sample.
• Page-level activity. Which of your pages got cited and how often each one was used.
• Trend over time. How those counts have moved over the range you pick, so you can tell if you are gaining or losing ground.

That is the report. It is free, it comes straight from the search platform, and it has been live since February 10, 2026.

You can read about the launch on the official Bing Webmaster blog post from February 10, 2026. Search Engine Land covered the launch too.

Why this matters for a small business

A service business owner who's never logged into Bing Webmaster Tools is, today, completely blind to AI citation. She asks ChatGPT for a dentist in her area and reads three names back. None of them are her practice, and there's no way for her to check whether the same thing happens for a hundred other patient questions she's also missing.

The AI Performance report shows a sample of the search phrases Microsoft's AI used when it cited her website, over whatever date range she picks. The owner verifies her site (a one-time setup where she proves the site is hers by uploading a small file or adding a Domain Name System record), then opens the AI Performance tab and reads through the list of grounding queries. Each row is a phrase the AI searched for while answering someone's question. It turns guessing into a list she can work from.

The report covers citations in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries, and select partner integrations. It does not include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews. Even with that limit, it is a free picture of AI citation activity straight from the platform.

Can it tell you anything about ChatGPT? A little. OpenAI's help page on ChatGPT search says it "sometimes partners with other search providers" and points readers to Microsoft's privacy statement. Microsoft runs Bing. In a February 2025 study, Seer Interactive found more than 87% of ChatGPT's cited sources were in Bing's top 20 results for the same question. That suggests pages Bing ranks well have a better shot in ChatGPT too. The report still counts Microsoft's citations only. For ChatGPT, read it as a rough hint at best.

How to actually get the report this weekend

Setup is a one-time job. Here is the short version.

1. Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a free Microsoft account. If you already have a Microsoft email or Hotmail address, that works.
2. Add your website (Bing calls this adding a site to your account).
3. Verify the site, as described above. The Domain Name System (DNS) record step is just a setting at your domain registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap, and most platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify have a guided helper that does this in two clicks.
4. Wait a few days for the data to start coming in. Bing crawls your site first, then begins counting.
5. Open the AI Performance tab in the left sidebar. Read the list of grounding queries.

That's it. Ten minutes of work the first time. After that, a monthly check takes five minutes.

What to do with the first read of the report depends on what you find. In the audits I run, a site with hundreds of grounding queries is getting cited often by Copilot, and the work from there is to figure out which of your pages get used the most and double down on that style of answer. For most service businesses, though, the first count will be small or zero, which means Copilot is mostly skipping the site on customer questions. The report can't tell you whether ChatGPT is doing the same. The fix is to publish clearer answers to the questions your customers actually ask: prices in plain text, hours in plain text, and a dedicated page for each specific service or condition. The patterns that move the count are the same ones I have been writing about for months.

What the report does not tell you

Two real limits worth calling out before you act on the data.

First, the report only covers Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries, and select partner integrations. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews are not in the dashboard at all. You get real numbers for Microsoft's AI answers, a rough hint for ChatGPT, and nothing for everything else.

Second, you can only see questions where you got cited at least once. Questions where Copilot answered and skipped your site entirely never appear in the data. And Microsoft says the data shown is a sample of overall citation activity, so read the counts as a trend. To see what Copilot or ChatGPT actually says when your site is not in the citation list, you have to ask the question yourself or run a tool that asks the questions on your behalf.

The combination most small businesses end up using is straightforward. Bing's free report handles your monthly baseline for the questions where you are cited. A separate audit tool fills in everything else: the questions where you were skipped, and the engines outside the Bing dashboard. Vyzz runs that second piece across every major engine on the same schedule.

Common questions about the Bing AI Performance report

Does the Bing AI Performance report show ChatGPT citations directly?

No. The report covers Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries, and select partner integrations. ChatGPT isn't in it. ChatGPT's sources overlap a lot with Bing's top results, so the report gives a rough hint about ChatGPT and nothing more.

How long does setup actually take?

About ten minutes if your website is on a normal platform like WordPress, Squarespace, or Shopify. You add your site, prove it is yours by uploading a small file or changing one setting at your domain registrar, and wait for the data to start filling in. Bing usually shows the first numbers in a few days.

What if my site already shows zero citations?

That is the most common starting point for a small business. The report becomes a baseline. You then publish clearer answers on your services pages, ask for more reviews, and re-check next month to see whether the citation count moves.

Corrected October 12, 2026: an earlier version gave the launch date as February 19 and called the release early access. Microsoft launched it as a public preview on February 10, 2026. We also corrected how the date range, average cited pages and grounding queries work, and toned down what the report says about ChatGPT.