On 10th February 2026, Microsoft officially launched AI Performance inside Bing Webmaster Tools. 

Why is this important? 

Because it’s the first platform-level dashboard that shows publishers how their website  content appears in AI-generated answers.

This update provides us with visibility into how websites are cited across AI-generated summaries in Bing; Microsoft Copilot; and some AI partner integrations.

For the first time since the rise of AI in search, content publishers can measure how often their website’s content is referenced in generative AI responses. 

This is a huge shift in search transparency for marketers,  and will be instrumental in reporting and content strategies for generative search optimisation. 

Extending Search Insights Into AI

Historically, Bing Webmaster Tools has helped website owners track indexing, crawl health, and traditional Bing search performance. The new AI Performance feature will expand those insights into AI-driven search experiences as well.

As AI-generated answers increasingly compete with traditional “blue links,” visibility is no longer just about search engine ranking positions. It is also about whether your website’s content is cited as a trusted source when AI systems generate responses.

This release signals Microsoft’s recognition that citation visibility is becoming a measurable and strategic asset.

What does the AI Performance Dashboard Measure?

The dashboard provides several new metrics designed to track citation activity across AI experiences. These are: 

Total Citations – The total number of times your website’s content is cited as a source in AI-generated answers during the selected time period.

Average Cited Pages – The average number of unique pages from your website cited per day.

Grounding Queries – Key phrases used by AI systems to retrieve and reference your content. This offers important insights into which topics or keywords are triggering citations.

Page-Level Citation Activity – Citation counts for specific URLs, helping identify which individual pages are most frequently referenced.

Visibility Trends Over Time – A timeline view showing how citation activity changes across supported AI experiences.

Whilst all of the above will be very useful to marketers and website owners, it is important to note what the dashboard currently does not include ranking position data; sentiment or intent analysis; preview of AI answers; or competitor comparison (only your own site’s data).

We believe that all of these missing elements are extremely important, and that’s why we’ve included them in the data that you get back from our Response RAIdar tool. 

Why This Matters: The Shift from SEO to GEO

As you’re probably already aware, search optimisation is evolving in a big way. 

Traditional SEO focuses on rankings and click-through rates. 

Generative search introduces a new objective: being cited within AI-generated answers.

In AI environments, your website being cited establishes brand authority and visibility even if users never visit any of your webpages.

This represents a big structural shift in how digital visibility should be thought about. 

The Strategic Implications for Marketers

Firstly, rankings are no longer the main goal. 

AI systems may cite content regardless of traditional ranking positions in Bing or Google. The priority is shifting from being “position one” to being “referenced as a source.”

This increases the importance of having clarity, authority, and structured information on your website.

Secondly, page-level authority matters more. 

The dashboard highlights which specific URLs are cited most often. This suggests AI systems may be evaluating content at a granular, page level.

For content marketers, strong topical clusters, clean internal linking, and well-structured standalone pages will now become even more critical. Each webpage must function as a clear, self-contained knowledge asset in order to appeal to AI. 

Thirdly, informational content will gain more strategic value.

AI systems tend to prefer explanatory content – possibly because information queries are the ones users tend to ask AI. 

Consequently, AI likes to pick out definitions, how-to guides, structured FAQs, and data-backed resources from websites to cite in their answers.

Top-of-funnel content is no longer just a traffic driver. It becomes a real brand positioning tool within AI-generated answers.

Fourthly, content structure outperforms content length.

Microsoft explicitly highlights the importance of having clear headings, tables, FAQ sections, and organised content formatting. 

AI models extract structured information much more effectively than long, narrative-style content. 

Therefore, concise, well-organised webpages are more likely to be cited in AI than verbose, badly structured marketing copy.

Next, content freshness and accuracy will influence AI citations.

The emphasis on content updates and IndexNow integration suggests that freshness does play a role in your content being included in AI results. 

Outdated statistics, unmaintained guides, or inconsistent information may reduce your chances at being cited. 

This means that content maintenance should be part of your ongoing strategic activity rather than a periodic task, or something you don’t prioritise. 

Finally, the big one to remember – being cited does not equal getting website traffic!

Being cited in AI answers does not guarantee clicks. In a lot of cases, AI may satisfy user intent directly within the answer so they won’t need to click. This may be disappointing, but it’s important to remember that whilst citations may not give you traffic, they will give you brand authority, trust signals, and assisted conversions. 

This may require you to expand your website and marketing KPIs beyond rankings and sessions to include AI citation metrics and brand visibility indicators.

How to Use AI Performance Insights Strategically

To make the most of this development, marketers and SEO teams should:

Audit Cited Pages – Identify patterns in structure, formatting, and depth among frequently cited content.

Improve Underperforming Pages – Enhance clarity, add structured sections, incorporate FAQs, and support claims with data.

Strengthen Content Hubs and Topical Clusters – Deepen coverage around key subjects and ensure that internal linking reinforces your authority on that subject.

Optimise for Quotability – Ensure that key sections are self-contained, clear, and directly answerable. If an AI extracts a paragraph, it should stand independently and make sense without additional context.

Maintain Content Freshness – Regular updates can help ensure that AI systems reference the most current version of your content.

The Competitive Advantage of Early Adoption

Most businesses are still focused exclusively on traditional rankings. We are seeing some brands come to us specifically for GEO and Response RAIdar rather than traditional SEO but this is most definitely the exception, not the rule. Most are not actively monitoring AI citation visibility.

This means that organisations that begin optimising for AI inclusion now may gain an early-mover advantage in establishing authority within generative search environments.

This stage resembles the early days of SEO – when understanding platform signals before competitors created disproportionate gains.

Looking Ahead

Microsoft’s AI Performance dashboard is likely just the beginning. Future developments may include competitive citation comparisons, AI visibility scoring, citation share metrics, context previews of AI answers, and deeper integration with traditional search analytics.

As AI-generated responses become more prominent across all search platforms, citation tracking may actually become a standard performance metric. 

Microsoft’s AI Performance feature represents a large shift in search transparency. It acknowledges that visibility in AI-generated answers is becoming a measurable and strategic asset that marketers need access to.

It’s clear that the future of search performance will not be defined solely by rankings and clicks. 

It will also be shaped by whether your content is trusted, structured, and authoritative enough to be referenced when AI systems generate answers.

In this evolving landscape, online success will belong not just to those websites who rank, but to those who are cited. To find out more about your Bing Webmaster Tools data, Generative Engine Optimisation, and how to adapt your marketing and content strategy for generative AI, get in touch.