How to see how often Microsoft Copilot cites your pages

· Edited by Chris Dolan

To see how often Microsoft Copilot cites your pages, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and open the AI Performance report. It counts how many times your pages were shown as sources in AI answers, lists the pages, and shows the phrases the AI searched with. Every statement below was checked against Microsoft's own pages on 9 October 2026.

Two limits apply from the start. The report is a preview and its figures are a sample, so read it as a trend. And a citation is a source shown beside an answer: it is not a click, and it is not a visit.

What it means when Copilot cites a page

An AI answer in Copilot can show the pages it drew on as sources. Microsoft's launch post of 10 February 2026 says the report shows how a publisher's content appears “across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations”. Each time one of your pages is displayed as a source in such an answer, that is one citation.

The AI Performance help page is direct about what a citation is not. It says citations do not represent clicks or traffic, and that the counts do not indicate ranking, authority or the part a page played in any one answer.

Where to look: the AI Performance report

The report is part of Bing Webmaster Tools, and it needs a site you can prove you own.

  1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and add your site. Microsoft's help page on adding and verifying a site says you can verify ownership directly or import a site you have already verified in Google Search Console. If you have not set that up, our guide to setting up Search Console walks through it.
  2. Wait for data. The same page says “it usually takes 48 hours for our system to generate analytics and data” after a site is added.
  3. Open AI Performance. Microsoft's pages give no click path for it, and the feature is still labeled a preview, so look for the report by name.
  4. Choose a date range: 7 days, 30 days, 3 months or a custom range.

What the report shows

  • Total Citations. How many times your pages were displayed as sources in AI answers in the period.
  • Average Cited Pages. The average number of different pages from your site cited per day.
  • Grounding queries. The launch post says this view “Shows the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content”. They are the AI's own search phrases, grouped, and not the questions people typed.
  • Pages. Citation counts for each address on your site.
  • Query to page mapping. Added on 23 March 2026. Microsoft's advertising blog describes it: “Select a grounding query to see its cited pages or select a page” to see its queries.
  • Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare. Added on 16 June 2026 as “four new capabilities available in preview globally within Bing Webmaster Tools” (Bing blog). Citation Share is your share of the citations for one grounding query and does not name the other sites. Compare lays an earlier period over the current one.

Which AI answers it covers

Microsoft names three places: Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations. It does not name the partners on any page read for this article, so the report cannot be used to say that an assistant from another company cited you. It also covers your own verified site only. There is no view of anybody else's citations.

How to read it carefully

  • It is a sample. The help page says: “The data shown represents a sample of overall citation activity.” It adds that very low activity may not appear at all and that totals can differ from one view to another.
  • It is not live. Data is refreshed daily with a short processing delay.
  • Grounding queries are summaries. One query can map to several pages and one page to several queries. The report does not show individual answers or exact prompts.
  • Export it. Query data, page data and the time series can be downloaded as CSV or Excel files, which is the practical way to keep a month-by-month record while the screens are still changing.

A second Microsoft view: Clarity's Citations dashboard

Microsoft Clarity, its behavior analytics tool, has a related screen. Clarity's blog announced it as generally available on 13 May 2026 and gives the path: “Dashboards → AI Visibility → Citations”. An earlier Clarity post explains where the numbers come from: “Citations in Microsoft Clarity unifies signals across Bing Webmaster Tools and Clarity”.

The Clarity documentation, last updated on 21 September 2026, sets the same boundary as Bing: “The Citation dashboard tracks citation activity in AI-generated answers only.” It does not measure rankings, impressions or click-through rates. A project administrator verifies the domain with the Clarity code, Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Both screens answer one narrow question: how often Microsoft's AI answers showed your pages as sources. What AI answers say about your business across other assistants is a wider question, and our guide to what AI search shows about your business explains how that is measured.

Sources

All eight were read on 9 October 2026.

  1. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview, Microsoft Bing Blog, 10 February 2026.
  2. AI Performance, Bing Webmaster Tools Help.
  3. Add and verify a site, Bing Webmaster Tools Help.
  4. See how you're showing up in AI search, Microsoft Advertising blog, 23 March 2026.
  5. New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft Bing Blog, 16 June 2026.
  6. Citations in Microsoft Clarity Now Generally Available, Microsoft Clarity Blog, 13 May 2026.
  7. Understanding Your Influence in AI Answers with Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Clarity Blog, 17 February 2026.
  8. Citation Dashboard Overview, Microsoft Clarity documentation, last updated 21 September 2026.