Bing just gave SEOs something they have been asking for: visibility into how AI systems use their content. The new AI Performance dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools shows exactly how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries, and partner integrations.

This is the first major search engine to offer analytics specifically for AI citations. If you care about Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), you need to pay attention.

What the AI Performance Dashboard Shows

The dashboard provides five key metrics that reveal how your content participates in AI-driven experiences:

• Total Citations: The number of times your content appeared as a source in AI-generated answers during a selected timeframe. This tells you how often AI systems reference your site, though it does not indicate placement or prominence within any specific answer.
• Average Cited Pages: The average number of unique pages from your site cited per day. Higher numbers suggest broader topical authority across your content.
• Grounding Queries: The key phrases AI used when retrieving your content. These are essentially the AI equivalent of search queries, showing what topics trigger citations of your pages.
• Page-Level Citation Activity: Citation counts for specific URLs, making it easy to identify which individual pages get referenced most often.
• Visibility Trends: A timeline showing how citation activity changes over time, helping you spot patterns and measure the impact of content updates.

How to Access the Dashboard

Log into Bing Webmaster Tools and look for the AI Dashboard Report in the left sidebar. The feature is currently in public preview, so the interface may evolve as Microsoft collects feedback.

You will need your site verified in Bing Webmaster Tools first. If you have not done this yet, the process is similar to Google Search Console: add a meta tag, DNS record, or upload a verification file.

Why This Matters for SEO Strategy

Traditional SEO metrics tell you about clicks, impressions, and rankings. But as more people get answers directly from AI instead of clicking through to websites, those metrics tell an incomplete story.

Consider this: if Copilot answers a user question by citing your content, you contributed value even if no click occurred. Until now, that contribution was invisible. The AI Performance dashboard changes that.

Microsoft calls this the beginning of "Generative Engine Optimization" (GEO) tooling. The term acknowledges that optimizing for AI citations requires different tactics than optimizing for traditional search rankings.

What Gets Your Content Cited by AI

Based on the patterns Microsoft highlights, content that performs well in AI citations tends to share certain characteristics:

Clear Structure and Formatting

AI systems parse content to extract relevant information. Pages with clear headings, tables, FAQ sections, and logical organization make it easier for AI to identify and reference specific facts. If your content is a wall of text, AI systems have to work harder to extract useful snippets.

Depth and Expertise

Pages that demonstrate genuine subject expertise get cited more frequently. Surface-level content that restates obvious information rarely makes the cut. AI systems favor content that provides unique insights, specific data, or detailed explanations.

Evidence and Sources

Content that supports claims with data, examples, and citations builds trust. When AI systems need to verify information before including it in an answer, well-sourced content has an advantage.

Freshness

Outdated content gets passed over. Regular updates signal that information is current and reliable. Microsoft specifically recommends using IndexNow to notify search engines when you update content, ensuring AI systems reference the most current version.

Consistency Across Formats

If your text says one thing but your images or videos suggest something different, AI systems may avoid citing you to prevent confusion. Align all content formats around the same entities, products, and concepts.

Practical Steps to Improve AI Citations

Here is how to use the new dashboard to improve your content strategy:

1. Identify your top-cited pages. Look at page-level citation data to see what is already working. Analyze these pages to understand why AI systems favor them. Then apply those patterns to underperforming content.

2. Study your grounding queries. These phrases reveal what topics trigger AI to cite you. If you see grounding queries for topics you have not covered deeply, that is a content gap worth filling.

3. Track visibility trends after content updates. When you improve a page, watch whether citation activity increases. This creates a feedback loop for your optimization efforts.

4. Compare indexed pages to cited pages. If Google and Bing index hundreds of your pages but only a handful get AI citations, investigate what separates the cited ones from the rest.

5. Build content specifically for AI citation. Create comprehensive resource pages on topics where you want AI visibility. Use clear formatting, include specific data points, and update regularly.

The Bigger Picture: AEO Is Now Measurable

For the past year, SEOs have debated how to optimize for AI without any way to measure results. Bing just solved that problem, at least for their ecosystem.

Google has not released equivalent analytics for AI Overviews yet, though it would be surprising if they do not follow. Until then, Bing AI Performance data offers the best proxy for understanding how AI systems evaluate and cite content.

The companies that start tracking these metrics now will have a significant head start. When AI-driven search becomes the norm rather than the exception, understanding citation patterns will be as fundamental as understanding click-through rates is today.

Log into Bing Webmaster Tools and check your AI Performance dashboard. The data might surprise you.