Bing Copilot for B2B AI Search: The Most Ignored Platform With the Most Underused Free Tools

On February 10, 2026, Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, the first official feature from any major AI search provider that shows website owners exactly how often their content is cited in AI-generated answers, which pages are being cited, and the specific grounding queries that triggered those citations. It has been live for five months. Most B2B marketing teams are not using it.

The reason is not that they have evaluated it and found it inadequate. The reason is that they are running a Google-only search visibility strategy and have not thought about Bing since 2019.

Why Bing Matters More for B2B Than Raw Market Share Suggests

Bing's global market share sits around 4.4%, according to Statcounter. That number does not tell the B2B story. On desktop and in corporate environments, Bing's effective reach is 10 to 15%. For any company targeting US enterprise buyers, that is the relevant denominator, not global all-device traffic.

More important than market share: Copilot runs on Bing's index. Microsoft 365 Copilot is embedded in Teams, SharePoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook. Microsoft reported 15 million paid M365 Copilot seats by early 2026, up 160% year over year. A procurement manager using Teams to research vendors, a CLO searching for LMS options through Copilot in their browser, a CFO asking Copilot in Word to summarize the options for a software decision, all of these search behaviors run against Bing's index and surface citations from Bing-indexed content.

For B2B companies whose buyers work in Microsoft environments, which is most enterprise buyers in the United States, Copilot is not a niche platform. It is the AI assistant that runs where the work happens.

What Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance Actually Shows

The AI Performance report provides two metrics that did not exist anywhere before its launch.

Grounding Queries are the internal search phrases Copilot generates when it needs to retrieve web content to answer a user's question. These are not the user's prompt, they are the decomposed search queries Copilot runs against Bing's index to build its answer. Otterly AI's analysis of three months of their own AI Performance data from November 2025 through February 2026 found 647 unique grounding queries across 30,398 total grounding events on 173 pages. The grounding queries revealed which specific questions Copilot was matching to their content, data that directly informed which landing pages and vertical content to build next.

Citations show how many times a specific page was used as a source in a Copilot or Bing AI-generated answer. These are not link clicks, they are the count of instances where Copilot grounded its response in content from that page.

The gap between these two metrics is critical to understand. Otterly AI's analysis shows that most grounding events do not result in a visible citation in the answer. Copilot may read your page to inform its response without naming your site as a source. Knowing the grounding query that triggered the visit is more actionable than the citation count alone, because it tells you what questions buyers are actually asking when your content is relevant.

Microsoft has since expanded the AI Performance report with four additional capabilities released in June 2026: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare, adding competitive benchmarking and intent categorization to the baseline citation data.

The Bing-to-ChatGPT Multiplier Nobody Talks About

Bing's index powers more than Copilot. A large share of ChatGPT's web search citations also come from Bing's index, because Microsoft and OpenAI have a partnership for search infrastructure. Arfadia's 2026 Copilot optimization analysis cites research showing that only 13% of ChatGPT's cited domains and 18% of Perplexity's cited domains overlap with Copilot for the same prompt, but when a domain is cited by both ChatGPT and Perplexity, it appears in Copilot 39.6% of the time.The practical implication: optimizing for Bing indexing improves your citation probability across Copilot, ChatGPT web search, and traditional Bing search simultaneously. If your SEO program has ignored Bing because Google dominates your traffic, you have been leaving a three-platform AI citation opportunity on the table.

87% of Copilot citations directly match Bing's top search results, per Seer Interactive's research cited by FlipAEO's 2026 Copilot SEO guide. This means Bing SEO is Copilot SEO. Fixing your Bing presence, submitting your sitemap, checking Bing-specific crawl errors, verifying page indexation in Bing's index, directly translates to Copilot citation improvements.

The Free Toolkit: Five Things You Can Do Today

1. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap

If you have not already. This takes under thirty minutes and is the single prerequisite for everything else. Go to bing.com/webmasters. Many B2B companies have verified their site but never submitted their sitemap, Bing's crawler is therefore slower to discover new and updated content.

2. Check the AI Performance tab

Once your site is verified and has sufficient citation data, the AI Performance tab appears in Bing Webmaster Tools. Review the grounding queries. These are the actual questions Copilot users are asking when they reach your content. Compare them to the content on the pages being cited. Are you answering the grounding query directly in the first two sentences? If not, that is your edit list.

3. Implement IndexNow

IndexNow is a free, open protocol that allows you to notify Bing (and other IndexNow-compatible search engines including Yandex and Seznam) immediately when your pages are updated. Instead of waiting for Bing's crawler to rediscover changes, which can take days or weeks, IndexNow sends a ping the moment you publish or update a page. For B2B companies publishing research, product updates, or competitive content, this can reduce the latency between publishing and Copilot citation to hours rather than weeks. Fento's 2026 analysis found that one client using IndexNow achieved roughly equal leads from Bing as from Google.

4. Check your Bing-specific rankings separately from Google

Your Google and Bing rankings can diverge significantly. Companies that rank well on Google often have untouched Bing SEO issues, missing sitemaps, slow indexation, thin page authority in Bing's index, that suppress their Copilot visibility. The Ansly 2026 Copilot optimization guide identifies this as the highest-leverage first step: "Many sites focus exclusively on Google and have incomplete Bing indexing, crawl errors, or no sitemap submitted to Bing. Since Copilot within Bing draws from Bing's index, fixing these foundational issues creates the base from which all other Copilot optimization builds."

5. Use grounding query data to identify content gaps

The grounding queries in AI Performance are a content brief waiting to be written. Queries that are triggering Copilot visits to pages that do not directly answer the question reveal exactly what content to build. Queries in your category where you are not appearing at all reveal what your competitors are answering that you are not. This is competitive intelligence available for free, from a tool most B2B teams are not using.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bing AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools?

Launched February 10, 2026, AI Performance is a free feature showing how often your content is cited in Copilot and Bing AI-generated answers. Two metrics: Total Citations (how often specific pages are used as sources) and Grounding Queries (the internal search phrases Copilot generates to find content). First official tool from a major AI search provider offering direct citation visibility to site owners. Access at bing.com/webmasters after verifying your site.

Why should US B2B companies prioritize Bing Copilot AI search visibility?

Microsoft 365 Copilot operates inside Teams, Outlook, Word, and Excel, the tools the majority of US enterprise knowledge workers use daily. With 15 million paid M365 Copilot seats and 160% year-over-year growth, Copilot is already embedded in enterprise procurement workflows. Buyers who research vendors inside their Microsoft environment are not opening a separate browser; they are asking Copilot. B2B companies whose content is not indexed and ranked in Bing are invisible in these workflows regardless of their Google search performance.

What is IndexNow and how does it help with Bing Copilot visibility?

IndexNow is a free, open protocol that notifies Bing (and other compatible search engines) immediately when your pages are created, updated, or deleted. Instead of waiting for Bing's crawler to rediscover changes on its own schedule, IndexNow sends a direct ping. For B2B companies publishing time-sensitive content, product updates, competitive comparisons, research, IndexNow can reduce the time between publishing and Copilot citation from weeks to hours. Implementation requires adding a simple API key to your site. Details at indexnow.org.

Does optimizing for Bing also improve ChatGPT citation rates?

Yes, meaningfully. ChatGPT's web search cites content from Bing's index as part of its Microsoft partnership. Research shows that when a domain is cited by both ChatGPT and Perplexity for the same prompt, it appears in Copilot 39.6% of the time, roughly three times the rate of domains cited by only one model. This means strong Bing indexing creates a multiplier effect across multiple AI platforms. 87% of Copilot citations match Bing's top search results for the same query, confirming that Bing SEO is the foundation of Copilot SEO.

What does the grounding queries data in AI Performance actually tell you?

Grounding queries reveal the specific internal searches Copilot runs when assembling answers to user prompts. A user asking "what is the best LMS for healthcare compliance training" might trigger grounding queries for "healthcare LMS compliance," "LMS HIPAA compliant 2026," and "corporate training healthcare certification." If your pages appear in grounding events for these queries but are not directly answering them in the first paragraph, the grounding query data tells you exactly what to edit. It is a direct content brief derived from real Copilot user behavior.