Bing Webmaster Tools in 2026: Why It Matters for ChatGPT, Copilot and AI Search

🔎 AI Search · Updated October 2026 · 10 min read · by Jacob Campbell

Bing Webmaster Tools matters for AI search because Microsoft Copilot answers web questions by sending search queries to Bing, and because it is the only major webmaster console that reports how often AI answers cite your pages. Since February 2026 its AI Performance report shows citations across Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and partner experiences, and since June 2026 it shows your citation share per query. ChatGPT is less clear-cut: OpenAI says ChatGPT search sometimes uses other search providers but does not name them. This guide explains what is documented, sets the tool up step by step in about 20 minutes, and gives you a monthly routine.

Key facts

• Feb 10, 2026 — AI Performance report launched in public preview
• Jun 16, 2026 — Citation Share, Intents, Topics and Compare added
• 100 sites — Imported from Google Search Console in one go, already verified
• Aug 11, 2025 — Bing Search APIs retired in favour of Grounding with Bing Search

Why Bing’s index matters for AI answers

Microsoft documents that Copilot grounds web answers in Bing: when web search is enabled, Copilot “generates a search query that it sends to the Bing search service” and uses what comes back to compose the response (Microsoft Learn). A page Bing has not indexed cannot be one of those grounding results.

Bing’s reach goes further than Bing.com and Copilot:

• Other search engines. DuckDuckGo says its traditional links and images are “largely” sourced from Bing (DuckDuckGo Help).
• AI apps built on Microsoft’s cloud. Microsoft retired the public Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025 and pointed developers to Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents (Microsoft lifecycle notice). Agents built that way ground their answers in Bing results.
• Partner AI experiences. Bing’s AI Performance report counts citations in “select partner integrations” as well as its own products, though Microsoft does not list the partners.

In practice, many small-business sites set up Google Search Console years ago and never touched Bing. If Bing has crawl errors on your site or has not picked up your new pages, you will not see it anywhere else.

What is (and is not) documented about ChatGPT and Bing

OpenAI’s current help article on ChatGPT search says that “ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers” and that it rewrites your question into targeted queries sent to those providers; it does not name them (OpenAI Help: ChatGPT search). Bing is widely reported to be one of them, but OpenAI’s documentation does not confirm it, so this guide does not treat it as fact.

What OpenAI does document is its own crawler: to appear in ChatGPT search results, allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and make sure your host or CDN does not block OpenAI’s published IP ranges. So the practical position is:

• Being well indexed in Bing helps with Copilot for certain, and plausibly with any AI product that uses Bing results.
• For ChatGPT specifically, allowing OAI-SearchBot is the documented requirement. See robots.txt for AI crawlers and the AI crawler user-agent list.
• Do both. They cost little and do not conflict.

Set up Bing Webmaster Tools, step by step

Setup takes about 20 minutes, and less if your site is already verified in Google Search Console.

1. Sign in at bing.com/webmasters.
2. Import from Google Search Console (fastest). On the My Sites page choose Import, sign in to Google and allow access. Bing reads your list of verified sites and their sitemaps; imported sites are verified automatically. Up to 100 sites can be imported at once, and an account can hold up to 1,000 sites (Bing Webmaster blog).
3. Or add the site manually and verify it with one of three methods: upload the XML file Bing gives you (BingSiteAuth.xml) to your site root, add a meta tag to your home page’s <head>, or add a CNAME record in DNS. If your DNS provider supports Domain Connect, Bing can add the record for you after you sign in to the provider. The meta tag looks like this:

   <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="YOUR-CODE-FROM-BING" />

4. Submit your sitemap under Sitemaps, even if robots.txt already lists it. Bing says it fetches a newly submitted sitemap immediately and then typically at least once a day.
5. Turn on IndexNow (next section) so new and changed URLs are reported the moment you publish.
6. Inspect your key pages with URL Inspection: home page, main service pages, contact page. Fix anything reported as blocked or not indexed.
7. Check Site Scan and Recommendations for crawl errors, missing titles and broken links, and fix the ones on pages that matter.

If you change hosts or domains later, add the new property the same day. The where to submit your sitemap guide covers the other engines.

Sitemaps, IndexNow and URL submission

Bing recommends using sitemaps and IndexNow together: sitemaps give it the full list of URLs, and IndexNow tells it immediately which ones changed (Bing Webmaster blog, July 2025).

Sitemaps. Bing’s July 2025 guidance asks for lastmod values in full ISO 8601 format with date and time, and for lastmod to change only when the content really changed. A sitemap file holds up to 50,000 URLs. List the sitemap in robots.txt and submit it in Bing Webmaster Tools:

User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

<url>
  <loc>https://www.example.com/services/web-design/</loc>
  <lastmod>2026-10-06T14:20:00+00:00</lastmod>
</url>

IndexNow. IndexNow is an open protocol, launched by Microsoft Bing and Yandex in October 2021, that lets your site notify participating search engines when a URL is added, updated or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Naver and Seznam participate; Google does not. You host a key file on your domain and send a simple HTTP request listing changed URLs, and a submission to one participating engine is shared with the others. Implementation details, including PHP and WordPress options, are in our IndexNow guide.

Manual URL submission. Bing Webmaster Tools also has a URL Submission tool and API with a daily quota shown in the tool. Use it for a handful of urgent pages; IndexNow is the better default because it runs automatically.

None of these guarantees indexing. They make sure Bing knows about your pages quickly; whether a page is indexed and cited still depends on its quality and on whether it answers the query.

The AI Performance report and citation share

The AI Performance report, launched in public preview on February 10, 2026, shows when your pages are cited as sources in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations (Bing announcement). It reports four things:

• Total citations: how many times your pages were shown as sources.
• Average cited pages: the average number of unique pages from your site cited per day.
• Grounding queries: the search phrases the AI ran when it retrieved your content. Bing says this is a sample of overall citation activity.
• Page-level citation activity: citation counts per URL.

On June 16, 2026 Bing added four views in preview (Bing blog):

• Citation Share: “the percentage of citations attributed to your site out of all citations shown across all sites for that same grounding query.” Bing calls it an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard.
• Intents: grounding queries grouped by purpose, such as informational, commercial, navigational or local.
• Topics: related grounding queries clustered by subject.
• Compare: an earlier period overlaid on the current view.

How to read it. Grounding queries are the searches the AI ran, not the words the user typed, but they tell you which questions your pages answer. Sort pages by citations, check that the most-cited pages are accurate and current, and look for commercial or local queries where your citation share is low: those are the pages to improve first. The report has no click data; pair it with the referral and analytics methods in how to measure AI search traffic.

Controlling how Copilot uses your content

Bing gives you page-level control over AI answers through two robots meta values, documented since September 2023 (Bing Webmaster blog):

• NOCACHE: the page may still appear in AI answers, but only its URL, title and snippet are shown.
• NOARCHIVE: the page is not included in or linked from AI answers.

Bing said both values also limit use of the content for training its generative AI foundation models. For a business that wants to be cited, the right setting is usually neither: leave pages open and make them worth citing. Use NOARCHIVE only for content you never want summarised, such as paid material.

In February 2026 Microsoft rewrote its Bing Webmaster Guidelines to describe generative engine optimization alongside SEO, with directive-by-directive notes on how each robots value affects AI experiences, and stated that GEO does not guarantee citations any more than SEO guarantees rankings (Search Engine Journal report; read the current guidelines inside Bing Webmaster Tools). Blocking bingbot in robots.txt removes you from Bing entirely, and with it from Copilot’s web grounding. If you use Cloudflare’s bot controls, check they are not challenging bingbot; see Cloudflare AI Crawl Control.

A 15-minute monthly routine

1. Search Performance: note clicks and impressions for your main pages and compare with last month.
2. AI Performance: record total citations, the top cited pages, and citation share for three to five commercial queries that matter to you. Use Compare to see the change.
3. Grounding queries: scan for questions you do not answer anywhere on the site. Each is a candidate page or FAQ.
4. Sitemaps: confirm the last read date is recent and the submitted and indexed counts are close.
5. IndexNow: confirm submissions are still arriving. A plugin update or host move can silently break it.
6. Recommendations and Site Scan: fix new errors on important pages.

Keep the numbers in a simple spreadsheet. AI citation counts move a lot from month to month, so the trend over a quarter is more useful than any single figure.

Limits: what Bing Webmaster Tools will not tell you

• It covers Microsoft’s ecosystem only. Citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Google’s AI features are not in the AI Performance report unless they come through an unnamed Bing partner. For Google, use Search Console; see AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• The AI data is a preview and partly sampled. Microsoft says grounding queries are a sample and that the June 2026 features are early previews. Treat the numbers as directional.
• No clicks, no positions. The report counts citations; it does not say where in the answer you appeared or whether anyone clicked.
• Indexing is not citation. Being in Bing’s index makes a page eligible; clear, specific, accurate content is what gets it chosen. See how to get cited by AI assistants.
• The ChatGPT link is not documented. Do not set Bing up expecting a guaranteed effect on ChatGPT; set it up because Copilot and Bing-powered products are documented to use it.

Product facts: the AI Indexing Pack

Stated plainly, so it can be checked against the product page:

• What it is: the AI Indexing Pack is a set of files you upload to your own website. It is sold by Built2WinWeb as a one-time purchase, with no subscription.
• What it ships: (1) a working MCP server using the Streamable HTTP transport, with typed output schemas and tool annotations; (2) Markdown content negotiation, so agents can request a clean text version of each page; (3) llms.txt, agents.txt and agent cards; (4) the full /.well-known/ discovery tree; (5) OAuth protected-resource metadata; (6) bot access control that verifies crawler identity; (7) a README with a verification checklist.
• Requirements: PHP 7.4 or newer, Apache or LiteSpeed with .htaccess support, FTP access, and a domain you control. Installation takes about 30 minutes.
• What it is not: it is not a WordPress plugin (that is the separate WordPress edition, which needs WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 8.0+), it does not write content for you, it does not guarantee rankings or citations, and it is not a managed service.
• Free routes in: sites built on AIWebBuilding get the core built in, and a 50-day streak on FreeAIBoost unlocks the pack for one domain. Current prices are on the product pages.

Related reading

• IndexNow: the complete guide — Key files, request formats and plugins for instant indexing in Bing and other engines.
• How to measure AI search traffic — Referrers, GA4 channel groups, server logs and citation tracking.
• Where to submit your sitemap — Every search engine console worth adding your sitemap to.
• robots.txt for AI crawlers — Which bots to allow, which to block, including OAI-SearchBot.
• How to get cited by AI assistants — What makes a page a source ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google pick.
• What is NLWeb? — Microsoft’s natural-language endpoint for websites.
• AI Indexing Pack — The file-drop kit: MCP server, Markdown pages, llms.txt, discovery files and bot access control for any PHP site.

Frequently asked questions

Does Microsoft Copilot use Bing?

Yes. Microsoft documents that Copilot generates search queries from your prompt, sends them to the Bing search service, and uses the results to ground its response.

Does ChatGPT use Bing for search?

OpenAI says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers but does not name them in its help documentation. The documented requirement for ChatGPT search is allowing OAI-SearchBot to crawl your site.

What is the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools?

A report launched in public preview on February 10, 2026 that shows how often your pages are cited in AI answers across Copilot, Bing AI summaries and select partners, with grounding queries and per-page counts.

What is citation share in Bing Webmaster Tools?

Added on June 16, 2026, it is the percentage of all citations shown for a grounding query that went to your site. Microsoft describes it as an observational metric, not a ranking.

Can I import my sites from Google Search Console into Bing?

Yes. Bing Webmaster Tools imports verified sites and their sitemaps from Search Console, up to 100 at a time, and imported sites are verified automatically.