AI search visibility is becoming measurable. Bing Webmaster Tools has introduced AI Performance, a report showing when a verified website is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, Bing and select partner integrations.
What is AI Performance?
Microsoft launched the public preview on February 10, 2026. The report includes Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, grounding queries, page-level citation activity and trends over time.
Why citations matter
Traditional SEO often focuses on rankings, impressions and clicks. In generative search another question becomes important: is your site being used as a source when an AI system builds an answer? Total Citations helps track that, although Microsoft explicitly says citation counts do not indicate rank, authority or position within an answer.
Grounding queries are valuable for GEO
Grounding queries are phrases used by the AI system to retrieve content that was later cited. They can reveal which concepts and subtopics make a page useful as supporting evidence. They should be analysed as themes, not treated as a list of keywords that each deserve a separate page.
Five things to analyse
- Which pages are cited most often?
- Which themes appear repeatedly in grounding queries?
- Which cited pages need stronger internal links or conversion paths?
- Which strategically important topics receive no citations?
- How do citation trends change after content updates?
SEO and GEO share the same foundation
Content still needs to be discoverable, crawlable and understandable. Microsoft also recommends IndexNow to notify participating search engines when pages are created, updated or removed. GEO therefore starts with technical accessibility, fresh information and useful content rather than with publishing volume.
What makes content more citable?
There is no guaranteed formula. Clear definitions, direct answers, verifiable sources, concrete examples and transparent separation between fact and analysis make information easier to evaluate and reuse. Generic summaries that add no original value are less defensible as a source.
Use Bing together with Google Search Console
Google’s 2026 generative AI reports provide visibility data inside Search Console, while Bing’s AI Performance provides a different perspective through citations and grounding queries. Together they offer a more useful GEO measurement framework.
The goal of GEO is not to trick an AI system into mentioning a brand. It is to create information useful and trustworthy enough to deserve citation.