Website owners and SEO professionals are constantly looking for better ways to measure how their content performs online. Now, Bing Webmaster Tools has rolled out a new insight called AI Performance, currently available in public preview. This feature gives publishers a clearer view of how their content is being used in AI-driven search and answer experiences.
What Is AI Performance?
AI Performance is a dashboard inside Bing Webmaster Tools that shows how often your site’s content is cited or referenced in AI-generated answers — not just in regular search results.
Before this, most reports focused on clicks and impressions from traditional search. But as users increasingly turn to AI for answers, understanding visibility in AI contexts has become critical — and that’s exactly what this new feature aims to do.
The Dashboard at a Glance
The AI Performance dashboard collects several useful metrics:
- Total Citations
This tells you how many times your content was used as a source in AI-generated responses during a selected time period. - Average Cited Pages
Shows the average number of unique pages from your site that were referenced by AI systems each day. - Grounding Queries
These are the sample phrases or topics that the AI used to find and cite your content. - Page-Level Citation Activity
This breaks down which specific pages on your site are being cited most often. - Trends Over Time
A timeline shows how citations rise or fall, helping you spot patterns.
Together, these metrics give a more complete picture of how your content participates in AI-powered search experiences.
Why This Matters
The shift to AI-enhanced answers is changing how people discover information online. Users might see AI-generated responses via tools like Microsoft Copilot or Bing’s summaries instead of traditional blue links — so clicks alone don’t tell the whole story anymore.
With AI Performance, publishers can:
- See which pages are being used as sources in AI responses
- Understand what kinds of questions trigger those citations
- Spot opportunities to improve or expand content that AI systems are already referencing
This insight helps site owners make smarter decisions about content strategy in an AI-first world.
How You Can Use These Insights
Once you know what content AI systems are citing, here are practical ways to benefit:
- Strengthen subject depth: Content that gets cited often likely aligns with clear topics — build on that.
- Improve structure: Good headings, tables, and FAQs make content easier for AI to reference.
- Add evidence and clarity: Facts, examples, and citations make content more trustworthy.
- Update regularly: Fresh content increases the chance that AI systems use the latest information.
These steps can help make your site not just visible, but useful and authoritative in AI responses.
Staying Current With IndexNow
To keep your content fresh, Bing recommends using IndexNow, a protocol that notifies search engines when pages are added, updated, or removed. This helps ensure the most up-to-date content gets referenced in AI-generated answers.
Final Thoughts
The AI Performance feature is a milestone for webmasters in an age where AI shapes more of the search experience. It doesn’t just show clicks or rankings — it reveals how your content participates in the new world of AI-powered discovery.
As this capability evolves, it will give even more clarity about the role content plays across search and AI — helping publishers adapt to what’s clearly the next phase of search visibility.
Sources:
Kira Cube
Kira Cube, founder of Kira Diverse, brings over eight years of SEO expertise across on-page, technical SEO, CRO, local optimization, e-commerce growth, and content refinement. His approach blends data, experience, and AI-ready strategies that help brands grow with clarity and long-term impact.