Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance Report: what is it and how do you enable it?

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance Report, launched late 2024, shows your impressions and clicks inside Microsoft Copilot and Bing Chat. Free activation: connect your site to Bing Webmaster Tools (DNS or meta verification), the report surfaces under Search Performance after 7-14 days of collection.

Why this tool is unique in 2026

It's the first official LLM/search publisher tool to expose citation stats. "Microsoft understood, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic, that publishers need measurement before they will invest," observes Lorenzo Eeman, founder of PROEMA. Fabrice Canel (Bing) publicly encouraged publishers in 2025 to enable the report to track Copilot visibility. The report segments "Traditional Search" from "Copilot/AI" with impressions, clicks, CTR per query. Coverage includes Bing Search, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Search (which uses the Bing index as backend, confirmed by OpenAI in late 2024), and some Apple Intelligence features since 2025.

Limitations to flag before pitching

Three limitations worth surfacing for a sceptical B2B client. (1) 90-day rolling window: no long-term history, you need monthly exports or the Bing Webmaster API to archive. (2) No model breakdown: impossible to distinguish Copilot Pro from Apple Intelligence or to split ChatGPT Search from Copilot inside the "AI" filter, a single click can come from several surfaces. (3) No textual citations: you see clicks, not the sentences your brand was cited in. For textual citation analysis you must complement with a versioned internal prompt panel (PROEMA Audit Express or In-Depth methodology).

Activation and operational use at PROEMA

Activation: bing.com/webmasters → Add Site → verification (DNS TXT, meta tag, XML file, or Google Search Console import). Allow 7-14 days for first usable data. PROEMA activates this report systematically at every GEO Optim kickoff. It's also the only free tool that proves to a sceptical client that their content actually shows up in Copilot, useful when defending a GEO budget internally. On expertcafe.be I track monthly Copilot volume through this report since launch (April 2026), the metric stabilises after roughly six weeks of crawl. Source: Bing Webmaster Tools official documentation 2024-2026.