- Microsoft says Copilot search and Bing search share the same foundation for crawling, indexing, and ranking. Your first job is getting your pages indexed by Bing.
- Bing's guidelines say a NOARCHIVE tag keeps a page out of Copilot answers. They also list blocking Bingbot as something to avoid.
- Microsoft says a Bing Places listing helps keep your address, hours, and contact information "current and eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses."
- IndexNow is a free way to tell Bing a page has changed. Microsoft says it helps Copilot avoid stale pages, though we haven't measured that.
- The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations of your site's pages by Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. It doesn't count mentions of your business that link to another site.
- We have no Copilot data of our own, and we haven't measured whether ChatGPT's searches touch Bing's index.
What Bing tells site owners about AI answers
Bing Webmaster Guidelines say that what earns a page a place in Bing search also makes it eligible for Copilot answers. They add rules that apply specifically to AI answers. The guidelines cover how Bing "discovers, crawls, indexes, evaluates, and surfaces content across Bing search experiences, Copilot, and grounding API results." On the same page, the guidelines say, "Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search."
Microsoft uses the term grounding for the web pages an AI answer draws on and cites. Bing defines it as "the source material and web evidence the system uses to support and cite its response." Much of the rule set ties back to "grounding eligibility." We've picked the rules we'd check first for a local business site.
| Bing's guideline | What it says about AI answers |
|---|---|
| Let Bingbot crawl | Avoid "Blocking Bingbot in your robots.txt file" and hiding key content behind client-side rendering, since "Content that cannot be reliably rendered may not be indexed or selected for grounding results." |
| Don't mark pages NOARCHIVE or NOCACHE | "NOARCHIVE prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and grounding results," and "NOCACHE limits Copilot to using only the URL, title, and snippet." |
| Make each page stand on its own | "URLs are more likely to be selected for grounding queries and citations when content stands on its own," so state facts plainly and put the key information near the top. |
| Name things consistently | "Use clear and consistent naming for people, organizations, products, and locations." |
| Keep structured data accurate | "Structured data may support clearer grounding but does not guarantee visibility or grounding traffic." |
| Earn links | The guidelines list "External links from relevant websites" among the ways Bing finds pages, and they treat link buying and private link networks as abuse. |
The guidelines list "Prompt Injection and AI Manipulation" among practices that can reduce a site's visibility or lead to its removal.
Does a Bing Places listing matter for Copilot?
Microsoft says a Bing Places listing helps keep business details current for AI answers, but none of the Microsoft pages we read explains how Copilot uses a listing. "For local businesses, accurate business information is especially important when AI experiences surface answers to location-based queries," Microsoft wrote in its February 2026 post launching the AI Performance report. The same post says owners can register with Bing Places "to help ensure that key details such as address, hours, and contact information remain current and eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses."
Microsoft also connects Bing Places to its ordinary local results. It says a search about a business can show details "such as store hours and location," and that registering with Bing Places makes Bing Maps more accurate.
In October 2025, Microsoft relaunched Bing Places, calling it "a free online platform where businesses can create and manage their listings to appear in Bing search results and Bing Maps." Microsoft says importing a listing from Google is now "better at preserving key attributes like business name, hours, and contact details," and bingplaces.com redirects to the tool's new address, bing.com/forbusiness. The relaunch post names "deeper integrations with Bing Maps and Copilot" as future work. We haven't tested whether claiming a listing changes whether Copilot names a business.
IndexNow and AI answers
Microsoft says IndexNow helps keep Copilot answers from pointing to outdated pages. We haven't measured whether it changes which businesses Copilot names. When a page is added, edited, or deleted, a site sends what IndexNow's site calls "a simple ping," to search engines at once. Bing's guidelines say these notices "help Bing refresh the index and reduce outdated or incorrect URL references in Copilot responses and grounding results."
The IndexNow FAQ says, "Submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing." IndexNow's home page lists Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, and Yep as supporters. Google is absent from the list.
You may already have IndexNow. The FAQ suggests checking whether your website software, "hosting provider, or SEO plugin already supports it," and names WordPress, Shopify, Wix, GoDaddy, and Duda as platforms that do, while Cloudflare supports IndexNow too. For a local business, we recommend turning it on wherever your platform offers a simple toggle so Bing gets an alert as soon as your site's hours, prices, or services change.
How Copilot chooses its sources
Microsoft says Copilot grounds answers to information questions in web search results centered on "high-ranking content from the web," and Bing says Copilot's search runs on Bing's crawl, index, and ranking. Microsoft's Copilot app transparency note, dated Aug. 18, 2026, says, "For certain conversations where users seek information, Copilot is grounded in web search results," with "hyperlinked citations" pointing to the pages used. The note doesn't name a search engine, while Microsoft says its workplace version, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, "generates a short query based on your prompt and sends it to Bing."
We think a business earns a place among Copilot's sources when it ranks in Bing for queries Copilot generates from what a customer asks.
We haven't measured Copilot's answers, so we can't say whether it cites directories for local questions as the engines in our guide's engine comparison do.
Can I see when Copilot cites my site?
Yes, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report counts citations of your site's pages across "Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations." Its public preview began Feb. 10, 2026. Microsoft says you can start using Bing Webmaster Tools at no cost. The report shows total citations, cited pages, and grouped phrases called grounding queries, which Microsoft defines as "the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was cited in its answer," and which it says "are not full user questions or prompts."
A June 16, 2026 update added preview features, including intent labels such as Local and a Citation Share number. Microsoft defines Citation Share as "the percentage of citations attributed to your site out of all citations shown for a specific grounding query," and says it "does not expose competitor domain names."
Microsoft says the data "represents a sample of overall citation activity," warns that "Very low or infrequent citation activity may not surface," and says a citation "does not represent traffic, clicks, or user engagement." A small local site may see few grounding queries or none. Microsoft says that outcome "is expected and does not indicate a penalty or exclusion."
The report counts only citations of your site's pages, so it won't show a Copilot answer that mentions your business based on a directory or your listing without linking to your site. Microsoft doesn't name the partner integrations, so we can't tell whether ChatGPT is among them. Our guide's section on AI visibility tools compares this report with Google's and with ChatGPT trackers. Visits Copilot sends you are a separate count, and Google Analytics 4 has an AI Assistant channel that Google says includes visits from sources "like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok."
Does Bing matter for ChatGPT too?
Bing may matter for ChatGPT, but we haven't measured that connection or which index sits behind its local searches. OpenAI says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers," and links to Microsoft and Shopify privacy policies when explaining how those providers handle queries. Microsoft says its grounding "powers nearly every major AI assistant in the market," though it names none.
We see little cost in keeping your site open for Bing to crawl and index, and it might pay off in ChatGPT as well as Copilot. The card ChatGPT shows for a business is a separate issue. Our captures show that the business identity on that card follows Google's listing data, but the capture payload names no provider, so we can't tell whether Bing Places plays a role there (see our guide's section on local sources).
What to do now
Claim your Bing Places listing, confirm Bing can read your site, enable IndexNow when your platform supports it, and check the AI Performance report. These steps come from Microsoft's pages, and the order is ours.
Claim your Bing Places listing
If your Google listing is correct, import from it, then confirm that your name, address, phone, and hours all match.
- Let Bingbot in. Check robots.txt and any bot controls at your host for a Bingbot block. The same check for AI crawlers appears in our guide's crawler check.
- Ask about NOARCHIVE and NOCACHE. Ask the person who runs your site whether any page has either robots setting. Bing says a page with NOARCHIVE is excluded from Copilot answers.
- Use IndexNow where it's a toggle. Check your platform, SEO plugin, or CDN settings first. Its effect on Copilot answers for a local business hasn't been tested.
- Put plain facts high on the page. State what you do, where you work, and your hours in text. Write your business name the same way everywhere, as Bing's guidelines advise.
Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools
Once you've added your site, open AI Performance and check which pages show as cited and which grounding queries carry the Local tag. A quiet month on a small site isn't a warning sign.
Through our AI SEO services, we make your hours, address, and phone agree on your site and on the listings AI tools read. We do the same for your services.
What we don't know yet
Our tracker doesn't query Copilot, so we don't have Copilot data of our own to back claims about it. We couldn't measure Bing's results either. Through a commercial data feed, we pulled Bing results for searches ChatGPT wrote about AI SEO agency questions, and 16 of 18 came back off-topic. For the queries we retried directly, the first results matched those from the feed.
We haven't tested whether IndexNow or a claimed Bing Places listing affects what Copilot says about a business. Our check of access to local business sites didn't include Bingbot. We don't know which partners Microsoft's AI report covers or whether ChatGPT's searches reach Bing's index.
