Bing Webmaster Tools Now Lists the AI-Answer Questions Where Other Sites Get Cited Instead of Yours
Bing's free webmaster dashboard added a beta view that groups your AI-answer citations into topics and lists the questions where other sites get cited and you don't. The numbers are estimates, and smaller sites may not see it yet.
This is a free look, straight from Microsoft, at the questions where other sites get cited in AI answers and yours doesn't. It's a beta built on estimates and covers only Bing-powered AI answers, so use it as a list of content ideas, not a scorecard.
Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free dashboard for website owners. Its AI Performance report tracks when your site is cited as a source in AI-generated answers. On October 13, 2026, Microsoft announced a beta “Topics Portfolio” tab in that report.
What changed
The tab sorts the searches where your site gets cited into broader topics. Bing calls these searches “grounding queries”: the lookups its AI runs to find sources for an answer. For each topic you see:
- Topic Size: roughly how many citations all sites got for the topic. Bing uses this as its measure of demand.
- Sites Cited: roughly how many sites get cited, which shows how crowded the topic is.
- Queries: roughly how many different searches the topic covers.
Under the table, a “Top Opportunity Queries” list shows searches where other sites get cited and yours doesn’t. Citation volumes appear as ranges, not exact counts. You can look at the last one, two or three months. Search Engine Journal reports that Bing’s AI runs these searches for Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and some partner integrations.
What’s confirmed and what isn’t
- It’s a beta. Bing hasn’t said when it will leave beta.
- AI assigns the topic labels, and Bing says they “can occasionally be imperfect.” Other companies’ brand names can also show up as opportunities.
- The numbers are estimates. Bing’s advice: “Treat the numbers as directional signals for planning, not as a precise ledger.”
- It counts citations, not clicks or visits. As Search Engine Roundtable noted, there’s no click data yet.
- Bing hasn’t said how much data a site needs. The tab only appears when there’s “sufficient data for your site,” and Bing says smaller sites “may see a shorter list or may not even see this feature.”
Why it matters for a small business
This gives you a free look at where your site shows up in Bing’s AI answers, and where other sites show up instead. The data comes from Microsoft itself rather than an outside estimate. That makes it useful for answer engine optimization (AEO), which means making your site a source AI tools cite.
Our view: if an opportunity query matches a service you offer, your site may not answer that question clearly. Bing doesn’t promise that adding content will get you cited, though. And this view only covers answers built on Bing’s searches, so it tells you nothing about Google’s AI answers.
Source: View the original source