Bing Tells You How Many Times an AI Cited Your Site. The Report Is Free

Everyone wants to know whether the AIs are citing their site. Almost nobody opens the one free dashboard that answers that with a number.

It sits inside Bing Webmaster Tools, it is called AI Performance, and it entered public preview on February 10, 2026. ¹

What the report shows

There are three main numbers, and each one has an official definition.

Total Citations. In Microsoft’s description: “shows the total number of citations that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers”. The total number of times your site appeared as a source in an answer generated by AI. ²

Average Cited Pages. “Shows the average number of unique pages from your site that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers per day”. How many distinct pages of yours were cited, on average, per day. ³

Grounding Queries. “Shows the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was referenced in AI-generated answers”. The phrases the AI used to go and fetch the content. ⁴

Think of a student taking an open-book exam who writes at the bottom of the page where each answer came from. That is what the report shows: how many times your text was the footnote. This is called citation in a generated answer.

The third number is the most interesting of the three, and I come back to it.

Which AIs count toward that number

The documentation lists three surfaces: Microsoft Copilot, the AI-generated summaries inside Bing itself, and “select partner integrations”. ⁵

Look at what that list does not have. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity are not there, and nothing indicates they sit among the partners, because the documentation does not name the partners. ⁵

So the dashboard answers a specific question: how many times your site was cited inside the Microsoft ecosystem. It answers nothing about the rest.

The three caveats, and they come from Microsoft itself

This part matters more than the numbers, so it comes before any reading of them.

First, on sampling. The dashboard warns, on screen: “the data shown represents a sample of overall citation activity”. It is a sample, and not a count. A total of 298,000 citations does not mean 298,000 citations; it means the projection of a sample. ⁶

Second, and this is the one that changes everything. The documentation states that the metric “does not indicate ranking, authority, or the role of any page within an individual answer”. ⁷

Read it slowly. The number does not indicate ranking. It does not indicate authority. And it does not indicate what the role of your page was inside that answer.

So being cited many times does not mean being the main source. It can mean showing up in passing, many times.

Third, on aggregation. The data comes “aggregated across supported AI surfaces”, summed across different surfaces. The dashboard does not separate how much came from Copilot and how much came from the summary inside Bing. ⁸

What to do with Grounding Queries

Here is the use that justifies opening the report.

Grounding queries are not what the user typed. They are the phrases the AI assembled to go and fetch content. It is the closest you get, today, to seeing the question as the machine rewrote it. ⁴

Compare that list with the queries in your Search Console. Where the two overlap, your content answers the question the way it is asked. Where the grounding list brings something you never saw in Search Console, there is a subject being asked of the AI. And traditional search does not show you that subject.

That gap is new content waiting to be written.

Where to find it

Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools with the account that verifies the domain and open AI Performance, in the side menu. The report accepts periods from 7 days to 6 months, or a custom range.

Inside it, the listing switches between Grounding Queries and Pages, and export is available.

A note on blocking

Microsoft states that “Bing respects all content owner preferences expressed through robots.txt and other supported control mechanisms”. ⁹

If you blocked the Bing crawler at some point, this dashboard will show little or nothing, and the cause is not the content.

Frequently asked questions

Does this report show citations in ChatGPT?

No. The declared surfaces are Microsoft Copilot, the AI summaries inside Bing, and partner integrations that the documentation does not name. ⁵

Is the citation number exact?

No. The dashboard declares that the data shown is a sample of overall citation activity. ⁶

Do many citations mean I am a strong source?

The documentation itself answers that. The metric does not indicate ranking, authority, or the role of any page within an individual answer. It serves to track variation over time. ⁷

Do I have to pay?

No. Bing Webmaster Tools is free, and the report is included for accounts with a verified domain.

Notes and sources

1. Bing Webmaster Blog, “Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview”, announcement of February 10, 2026, consulted on September 1, 2026.
2. Definition of Total Citations, same source as note 1. Literal quotation reproduced in the body.
3. Definition of Average Cited Pages, same source as note 1. Literal quotation reproduced in the body.
4. Definition of Grounding Queries, same source as note 1. Literal quotation reproduced in the body.
5. Surfaces covered: Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations. The documentation does not name the partners. Same source as note 1.
6. Sampling caveat displayed in the dashboard and in the documentation: the data shown represents a sample of overall citation activity.
7. Caveat declared in the documentation: the metric does not indicate ranking, authority, or the role of any page within an individual answer. Same source as note 1.
8. Aggregation across supported AI surfaces. Same source as note 1.
9. Statement on robots.txt and supported control mechanisms. Same source as note 1.