Copilot SEO is the work of making your pages easy for Microsoft Copilot to find in Bing and easy to cite when it answers. Microsoft documents that when web search is on, Copilot turns the user’s prompt into a short query, sends it to the Bing search service and uses the results to compose its response. So the foundation of Copilot visibility is Bing visibility: indexed pages, accurate facts and content that answers the short searches Copilot generates.
When a buyer asks Copilot “what’s the best CRM for a 20-person startup?”, you want to be in the answer and in the sources under it. This guide sticks to what Microsoft actually documents about Copilot and Bing, lists what it leaves open, and explains how to measure your visibility, including the parts Citegram doesn’t cover.
Key takeaways
- Microsoft documents that Copilot generates a search query of “a few words informed by the user’s prompt” and sends it to the Bing search service, so being indexed and well ranked in Bing is the starting point.
- When Copilot uses web search, the answer shows the exact queries it sent to Bing and the sources it used, which tells you what to optimize for.
- Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report, in public preview since February 2026, that counts how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing’s AI answers.
- Microsoft’s own advice for being cited includes clear structure, evidence, fresh content and IndexNow to notify Bing when pages change.
- Microsoft publishes no Copilot ranking factors. Citegram doesn’t track Copilot, so you measure it with Bing Webmaster Tools and manual checks.
How Copilot uses Bing to answer
Microsoft’s most detailed description is on its page about data, privacy and security for web search in Microsoft Copilot. It says that when web search is enabled, Copilot “may fetch information from the Bing search service when information from the web helps to provide a better, more grounded response”.
One prompt becomes a short Bing query
According to the same page, Copilot parses the prompt, identifies terms where web information would help, and generates a search query that is “different from the user’s original prompt”. The full prompt is only sent when it is very short, such as “local weather”. The results Bing returns are then used to compose the answer.
So a long buyer question like “which CRM should a 20-person startup pick if we need email automation” doesn’t reach Bing as written. Bing sees something shorter, closer to a keyword query. Your page competes for that short query, as we explain in query fan-out explained.
Copilot shows the queries it ran
Microsoft says web search query citations appear “in the linked citation section of the Copilot response” and show “the exact web search queries” sent to Bing, along with the sites searched. You can read the real queries behind a buyer prompt and check whether you rank for them in Bing.
A note on product names
The page above notes that Microsoft 365 Copilot is now called Microsoft Copilot. Its detailed documentation is written for work and school accounts. Microsoft doesn’t publish an equally detailed page for the consumer Copilot app, so treat these mechanics as the best official description, not a guarantee for every Copilot surface.
What Microsoft documents and what it doesn’t
| What Microsoft documents | What it doesn’t document |
|---|---|
| Copilot generates short queries and sends them to the Bing search service | How Copilot picks which Bing results to cite |
| Answers that use web search show the exact queries and the sources used | How many results Copilot reads per query |
| Web search can be turned off by an admin or by the user | Whether the consumer app follows exactly the same process |
| Bing Webmaster Tools reports citations in Copilot and Bing AI answers | Any list of Copilot ranking factors |
The documented part is the pipeline: prompt, short query, Bing results, answer with sources. The selection inside it is not public.
Controls that affect Copilot
There is no separate Copilot crawler token documented by Microsoft. Copilot works from the Bing search service, so the controls that matter are the ones Bing reads.
- Bingbot access. If robots.txt, your CDN or a firewall blocks Bing’s crawler, your pages can’t be in the results Copilot draws on. Our guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt covers how to audit those rules.
- NOCACHE and NOARCHIVE. In 2023, Bing announced controls for content usage in Bing Chat, the product that preceded Copilot. It said content tagged NOARCHIVE “will not be included in Bing Chat answers”, while NOCACHE content may be included with only the URL, title and snippet. Bing Chat has since become Copilot, and we couldn’t find a newer Microsoft page restating these rules, so check that neither tag sits on pages you want cited.
- User and admin settings. Organizations and users can turn web search off, in which case answers carry no web sources at all.
What Microsoft says helps you get cited
When Microsoft introduced AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, it listed ways publishers can improve how their content is used in AI answers. Here they are as a checklist, with what each means for a B2B site.
- Get indexed in Bing first. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and check that product, pricing, comparison and use-case pages are indexed. A page outside Bing’s index can’t be in Copilot’s results.
- Use IndexNow. Microsoft recommends IndexNow to tell participating search engines when content is added, updated or removed, so AI answers can reference the current version. This matters most for pricing and feature pages.
- Structure pages clearly. Microsoft says clear headings, tables and FAQ sections help AI systems reference content accurately. A comparison table of plans or a short FAQ on your pricing page fits that advice. See how to write content AI cites.
- Support claims with evidence. Examples, data and sources build trust. “Plans start at $15 per user per month” with a dated pricing table beats “affordable for every team”.
- Keep content fresh. Regular updates help AI systems reference the current version of a page.
- Stay consistent across formats. Keep your product name, category and pricing consistent in text, images and video. Local businesses should also keep their Bing Places listing current.
None of this guarantees a citation, but it removes the obstacles Microsoft names.
How to measure your Copilot visibility
Citegram doesn’t track Microsoft Copilot. Here is how to measure it anyway.
Use the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools
This is citation data from Microsoft itself, which few AI assistants offer site owners. Microsoft’s announcement says the report shows total citations, average cited pages per day, page-level citation activity, a sample of “grounding queries” (the phrases AI used when retrieving content it cited) and trends over time. It covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations.
Microsoft says the counts don’t indicate placement within an answer or page importance. The report also covers citations of your site, not whether Copilot named your brand or a competitor in the text.
Check prompts manually
To see what buyers actually read, run your prompts in Copilot yourself:
- Pick 10 to 30 buyer prompts without your brand name. Our guide to choosing prompts to track explains how.
- Ask each one in Copilot several times, with web search on. Answers vary between runs.
- Open the sources section and note the exact queries Copilot sent to Bing and the pages it used.
- Search those queries in Bing and see where your pages rank. If you’re absent from Bing for the query, that’s the first thing to fix.
- Record mentions, position and competitors in a spreadsheet, then repeat a few weeks later with the same prompts.
Watch referral traffic
Visits from Copilot links can show up in your analytics as referrals. Our guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4 shows how to separate them from other sources.
What Citegram covers instead
Citegram is a free Chrome extension with a dashboard that measures the other assistants your buyers use:
- Add your buyer prompts in the dashboard.
- Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok and Google AI Overviews. Citegram asks each prompt in a background tab with the accounts already signed in to your browser. No API key, and questions count toward your own plan usage.
- See whether each assistant named you and where. Each run records whether your brand was mentioned, its position and the sources each answer cited.
- See ChatGPT’s searches. For ChatGPT, Citegram also records the web searches it ran, which plays the same role as Copilot’s query citations.
- Compare share of voice per brand and per assistant, the most cited domains and trends over repeated runs.
First results arrive in about 10 minutes. For OpenAI’s assistant, see how to rank in ChatGPT.
FAQ
Does Microsoft Copilot use Bing?
Yes. Microsoft documents that when web search is enabled, Copilot generates a short search query from the prompt, sends it to the Bing search service and uses the results to compose its answer. Answers that use web search show the queries and the sources used.
How do I get my website cited by Copilot?
Make sure Bing can crawl and index your key pages, notify Bing of changes with IndexNow, and structure pages with clear headings, tables and FAQ sections, as Microsoft recommends. Then check which pages Bing ranks for the queries Copilot generates from your buyers’ prompts.
How can I see if Copilot cites my site?
Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and open the AI Performance report. It shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing’s AI answers, which URLs are cited and sample grounding queries. It doesn’t show brand mentions without a link, so add manual checks.
Is Copilot SEO different from Bing SEO?
Mostly no. Copilot draws on the Bing search service, so Bing SEO is the foundation. The differences are that Copilot writes its own short queries from the prompt, and that you measure it with citation data, not rankings alone.
Measure the assistants Citegram tracks
Use Bing Webmaster Tools for Copilot, and Citegram for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok and AI Overviews. The free plan tracks one prompt and one competitor, forever. Pro adds unlimited prompts and competitors for $10 per seat per month. See pricing.
ChatGPT
