Microsoft just made one of the most important moves in the generative engine optimization (GEO) space to date.
Bing Webmaster Tools now includes AI performance reports, giving publishers visibility into how their content appears across Bing’s AI-powered experiences. Brands can now see:
- Total citations: the number of times your site is cited in AI-generated answers
- Average cited pages: the average number of URLs from your site referenced by AI-powered experiences
- Page-level citations: the number of citations by URL
- Visibility trends over time: how citation activity ebbs and flows within AI-powered experiences
This isn’t a minor feature update. It’s a foundational infrastructure for the AI search era.
Why Bing’s new AI performance reporting matters for marketers
For the past two years, AI-driven search has operated largely as a black box. Publishers knew their content was being cited in AI answers, but they couldn’t measure it reliably. There was no structured reporting, no visibility into trends, no clarity on which topics were winning.
That changes now.
With AI performance reporting, publishers can finally answer questions including:
- Which topics consistently surface in AI-generated answers?
- Which pages across our site are being cited most often?
- Are we gaining or losing AI visibility over time?
- Which queries trigger citations vs. which don’t?
This is a meaningful step toward measurable GEO performance.
What Bing AI reporting unlocks for publishers
This reporting enables smarter strategy in three key areas:
1. Topic-level authority mapping
By analyzing queries that trigger citations, publishers can identify:
- High-performing thematic clusters
- Emerging authority zones
- Content gaps where competitors are being cited instead
2. Page-level optimization
Seeing which pages are cited most often allows teams to:
- Better understand which content formats are favored by AI systems
- Improve internal linking around high-citation assets
- Update and expand content that is already trusted by AI systems
3. Long-term visibility trend analysis
Perhaps most important, trend data makes it so publishers can:
- Detect visibility decay
- Spot emerging content categories
- Measure the impact of structured updates
All this together moves GEO from theory to performance management.
Expect this to push the broader competitive ecosystem forward, too. Google and other platforms will face increasing pressure to provide similar transparency.
The competitive implications of Bing’s new AI performance reporting
Brands that move first will have an advantage, as most publishers still treat AI visibility as passive, or something that “just happens.”
Now, we have evidence. Now, we have data.
The teams that actively monitor citation trends, map AI query triggers and align content strategy accordingly will almost certainly outpace those still optimizing solely for traditional rankings.
SEO is evolving. GEO is operationalizing.
And Bing just gave the industry a dashboard for AI discovery based on actual data.
Want to learn more and continue the conversation? Rise can help.
