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Microsoft Copilot & Bing: AI Search Updates and Citation Tracker

Copilot Search rollouts, the Bing Webmaster Tools AI citation reports, agentic shopping and ads, and what site owners can actually measure.

Last updated: Last checked: Copilot Search live worldwide except Russia and China; BWT AI citation reporting in global preview
4.46%Bing worldwide search shareStatcounter, July 2026
4 monthsBWT citation reporting beat Google's AI reports10th Feb vs 3rd Jun 2026
500,000+Merchants in the Copilot Checkout catalogMicrosoft, April 2026
US onlyCopilot Checkout availabilitySince January 2026

This page tracks Microsoft Copilot and Bing as an AI search surface: Copilot Search in Bing and the Copilot app, the AI citation reports in Bing Webmaster Tools, Copilot Checkout and the arrival of ads on AI answers.

One word does three jobs at Microsoft, so scope matters. This page covers the consumer Copilot people search with. Microsoft 365 Copilot (the paid workplace assistant) and GitHub Copilot (the coding assistant) are different products and are not covered here.

Bing holds a single-digit share of worldwide search, but it is the first major engine to show site owners citation-level data about AI answers. We update within a day or two of significant changes, and every claim links to a primary source.

Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI timeline: February 2023 to today

Every significant Copilot and Bing AI search change since the new Bing launched, newest first, from Microsoft's own announcements and dated primary coverage. Rows link to our full coverage where it exists.

One dot per milestone since the February 2023 new Bing launch, one lane per event type. Hover a dot to identify it; most dots click through to the entry below.
2023202420252026Product12Availability1Model1Data6Ads1
DateEventTypeWhy it matters
2026
AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster ToolsDataIntents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare, in preview globally
Microsoft Web IQ announcedProductGrounding APIs framed as "a search engine for AI systems"; interest form only
Copilot Mode in Edge retiredProductFeatures fold into default Edge on desktop and mobile after 9.5 months
Bing essay: keeping trusted content visible in AI answersDataRisk detection at query level, PSAs and elevation of authoritative sources
Bing essay: the index's evolving roleData"Grounding indexing is being built to help AI systems decide what to say"
AI Max ads for Copilot surfaces; Checkout at 500,000 merchantsAdsOpen pilot from May; ads on Copilot Search and Copilot Answers
Ribas essay: grounding and the AI webDataClaims Microsoft grounding powers nearly every major AI assistant
AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster ToolsDataFirst citation-level AI reporting from any major engine, four months before Google
Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents launch (US)ProductPayPal, Stripe and Shopify; Shopify merchants auto-enrolled after an opt-out window
2025
Search mode inside the Copilot appProductProminent, clickable citations on copilot.com, iOS, Android and Edge
Copilot Fall ReleaseProductCopilot Search, connectors and the upgraded Edge mode; US first
Bing supports the data-nosnippet attributeProductPublisher control over excerpting arrives on Bing, six years after Google
Microsoft guidance: optimizing content for AI answersDataMicrosoft's first concrete how-to-get-cited checklist
Bing Search APIs decommissionedProductRaw SERP access ends after 15 years; migration path is LLM grounding
GPT-5 in Copilot with Smart ModeModelFrontier model on launch day, all markets and platforms
Copilot Mode in Edge launchesProductOpt-in AI browsing experiment on Windows and Mac
Bing Search API retirement announcedProduct90-day sunset clock starts on the SEO industry's SERP pipe
Copilot Search in Bing launchesAvailabilityWorldwide except Russia and China; Bing's dedicated AI-answers page
2024
Bing generative search expands in the USProductAI-composed result pages reach a broad audience
Bing generative search introducedProductBing's AI Overviews analogue, shipped to a small share of queries
2023
Bing Chat rebranded to CopilotProductThe name that defines the beat; copilot.microsoft.com goes standalone
The new AI-powered Bing launchesProductThe original consumer AI search, three months before Google's SGE

Latest updates

Data

Bing Webmaster Tools adds Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare

Microsoft expanded the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools with four capabilities, all "available in preview globally".

Intents classifies the grounding queries behind your citations into intent categories. Topics groups them into thematic clusters. Compare overlays two time periods of citation activity.

Citation Share is the headline: your site's share of all citations for a query. Microsoft calls it "designed as an observational metric", not a ranking system, and it exposes no competitor domains, no traffic share and no quality scores.

The June post also restates what the report covers: "Microsoft Copilot, Bing, and select partner AI experiences".

For context, Google's Generative AI reports in Search Console, announced thirteen days earlier, carry impressions only. Bing is reporting the citations themselves, with the retrieval queries behind them.

Product

Microsoft announces Web IQ, grounding APIs built for AI agents

Ten months after retiring the Bing Search APIs, Microsoft announced their strategic successor: "a suite of AI-native grounding APIs built for the agentic era".

The framing is the story. "Web IQ is a search engine for AI systems. Where Bing was built to help people search the web, Web IQ is built to help AI agents find the right information, turn it into useful evidence, and use it inside reasoning."

Instead of ranked blue links, Web IQ returns passage-level "structured evidence objects". Microsoft claims sub-165ms p95 latency, measured in its own internal comparisons, so treat the number as a vendor claim.

For site owners, the post says Web IQ honors robots exclusion protocols and publisher controls, and that Microsoft is engaging the IETF on AI-era standards for the open web.

Availability is the honest caveat: the announcement ships no product, no pricing and no dates, only an interest form. Anything you may read about specific preview regions is not in Microsoft's post.

Product

Microsoft retires Copilot Mode in Edge after nine and a half months

Microsoft ended its named AI browser experiment: "As part of today's update, we're retiring Copilot Mode. With helpful features built directly into Edge, it's now simpler to shape how you browse and get more done."

The features survive the label. Multi-tab reasoning, history-informed answers, memory, Vision and Voice, Journeys, Study and Learn, the writing assistant and podcast generation all move into default Edge on desktop and mobile, with some features gated by market.

The lifecycle worth recording: launched 28th July 2025 as an opt-in experiment on Windows and Mac, upgraded in the October Fall Release, retired 13th May 2026. AI browsers kept churning across the industry; OpenAI's Atlas lasted 292 days.

The same day, a separate Bing essay, "Keeping Trusted Content Visible in an AI-Powered Search World", set out how Bing elevates authoritative sources inside AI answers: risk detection at query level, public-service announcements and SafeSearch modes.

Ads

AI Max ads arrive for Copilot surfaces; Copilot Checkout reaches 500,000 merchants

At its Activate event, Microsoft Advertising announced AI Max for Search campaigns, "available in open pilot in May", with expanded query matching, asset personalization and URL routing "to deliver relevant ads on AI surfaces like Copilot Search and Copilot Answers".

Offer Highlights, product-detail ads shown in Copilot, Edge and Bing, became available for retail in English-speaking markets, with Best Buy first.

Copilot Checkout grew in the same post: the catalog was "deepening" to more than 500,000 merchants, reach extended to Copilot's mobile apps, and Target loyalty accounts became linkable. Brand Agents expanded from Shopify to WooCommerce.

Microsoft also published striking agent-traffic figures: automated traffic growing 8x faster than human traffic, AI-driven sessions nearly tripling in 2025, agentic browser traffic up roughly 8,000% year over year. All are Microsoft's own internal measurements, footnoted as such, so read them as a vendor's claims about its ecosystem rather than market facts.

Data

Bing Webmaster Tools ships AI Performance, the first citation-level AI report

Bing Webmaster Tools gained a new set of insights "that shows how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations".

The metrics: Total Citations, Average Cited Pages (a daily average of unique pages surfaced as sources), Grounding Queries (the retrieval phrases behind the citations), page-level citation activity and visibility trends over time.

Microsoft's own framing sets the direction: "This release is an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling in Bing Webmaster Tools, helping publishers understand how their content participates in AI-driven experiences."

Two days later, Jordi Ribas, CVP of Search and AI, published a strategy essay claiming that "Microsoft grounding powers nearly every major AI assistant in the market". That is Microsoft describing Microsoft, but it explains why the report exists: citations are the currency Bing wants to be measured in.

The contrast with Google defines this beat. Google's Search Console Generative AI reports arrived four months later, on 3rd June 2026, and carry impressions only, with no citations and no queries.

ProductCopilot Checkout launches in the US with PayPal, Stripe and Shopify

Announced during NRF week, Copilot Checkout "is beginning to roll out in the U.S. on Copilot.com, with partner activation across PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe".

The enrollment default matters for merchants: "Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled following an opt-out window." Launch retailers included Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Ashley Furniture, plus Etsy sellers' items. The merchant, not Microsoft, remains the merchant of record.

Brand Agents launched alongside: on-site conversational agents for Shopify merchants, joined through a Microsoft Clarity waitlist. Mastercard and Visa were named as future agentic-payments partners.

Microsoft's pitch numbers are its own: journeys that include Copilot led to 53% more purchases within 30 minutes, and with shopping intent present, 194% higher purchase likelihood. Both come from Microsoft internal data, so attribute accordingly.

As of August 2026 we have found no market beyond the US, which makes the US-only gate the row to watch on this page's availability tracker.

ProductA Search mode arrives inside the Copilot app

Microsoft brought AI search into the Copilot assistant: a Search option in the app's mode drop-down, answering with "more prominent, clickable citations" and a pane that aggregates the sources used.

It went live on copilot.com, the iOS and Android apps, and Copilot in Edge.

The publisher significance came later: when the AI Performance report shipped in February, Copilot was the first surface it counted citations from. A mode that makes citations "prominent" and "clickable" is the mechanism that turns AI answers into measurable referral traffic.

ProductCopilot Fall Release bundles Copilot Search, connectors and an upgraded Edge

The Fall Release, presented by Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, packed twelve features. Three matter for search.

Copilot Search "combines AI-generated answers with traditional results in one view, providing clear, cited responses for faster and more trustworthy discovery".

Connectors let Copilot search OneDrive, Outlook, Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar. And Copilot Mode in Edge was upgraded toward what Microsoft called an AI browser, with Actions and Journeys, a direction it later reversed by folding the mode into Edge itself.

Rollout was staged: "live now in the US, and rolling out fast across the UK, Canada, and beyond in the next few weeks". Microsoft never announced per-market completion, so we do not track one.

Archive: 2 older entries
Product

Bing Search APIs go dark after fifteen years

Announced in May 2025 and effective 11th August 2025, the retirement was total: "Any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely." Every SKU went, Bing Search F1 and S1 through S9, and Bing Custom Search F0 and S1 through S4.

For the SEO industry this was infrastructure loss: rank trackers, SERP analysis tools and countless research scripts had drawn on these APIs for over a decade.

The replacement tells you where Microsoft thinks value moved. It recommended migrating to "Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents", an LLM-grounding product rather than a page of ranked results. The strategy got its full expression ten months later with Web IQ.

Model

GPT-5 arrives in Copilot with Smart Mode routing

On GPT-5's launch day, Microsoft shipped it into consumer Copilot with Smart Mode routing, "across all markets and platforms": web, Windows, Mac and mobile.

Day-one access to OpenAI's frontier model was the point: Copilot's search answers run on the same class of model as ChatGPT's.

A dating note, because model claims go stale quietly: this entry records the August 2025 arrival. Microsoft has shipped model changes across its products since, and we do not maintain a "current default model" claim for Copilot until we can verify one against a primary source.

What is Microsoft Copilot Search?

Microsoft's AI search surfaces: Copilot Search in Bing, the Search mode in the Copilot app, and AI summaries in Bing results.

4.46%Bing's worldwide search share in July 2026, up from 4.02% a year earlier (Statcounter)

Copilot Search is Microsoft's AI answer experience. On Bing, it is a dedicated results page that answers with inline-linked passages and a source list. In the Copilot app, it is a Search mode with prominent, clickable citations. Both draw on the Bing index.

Copilot Search combines AI-generated answers with traditional results in one view, providing clear, cited responses for faster and more trustworthy discovery.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI, Copilot Fall Release announcement, 23rd Oct 2025

The lineage is the oldest in AI search. Microsoft launched the new AI-powered Bing on 7th February 2023, three months before Google announced SGE, with a launch-day observation that still frames the product: "There are 10 billion search queries a day, but we estimate half of them go unanswered."

Bing Chat became Copilot in November 2023. Generative result pages arrived in 2024. Copilot Search in Bing went live worldwide except Russia and China in April 2025, and the app's Search mode followed that November.

Which Copilot? This page covers the consumer Copilot and Bing. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the paid workplace assistant inside Office apps, and GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant. Coverage that mixes the three, and much of it does, usually produces wrong availability and usage claims.

Scale context: Statcounter put Bing at 4.46% of worldwide searches in July 2026, against Google's 91.32%. The year's trajectory ran from 4.02% in July 2025 to a 5.14% peak in April 2026 before easing. Statcounter measures page-view referrals rather than users, so treat the share as directional.

Microsoft discloses no consumer-only Copilot user count. Its FY2025 annual report said the Copilot family had "surpassed 100 million monthly active" users, and a spokesperson told TechCrunch in January 2026 the family had "grown to 150 million total". Both figures span commercial and consumer products, so neither is an AI-search audience number.

Bing Webmaster Tools AI reporting: the Search Console of AI search

Bing shows site owners which AI answers cite them and for which retrieval queries. Nobody else does this yet.

The reason this hub exists for SEOs: Bing Webmaster Tools is the first place any search engine shows site owners citation-level data about AI answers. The reporting covers "Microsoft Copilot, Bing, and select partner AI experiences", and it shipped in stages:

FeatureWhat it showsStatusSince
AI Performance reportTotal Citations, Average Cited Pages (daily average of unique pages surfaced as sources), Grounding Queries (the retrieval phrases behind citations), page-level citation activity, trendsPublic preview
IntentsGrounding queries classified into intent categoriesPreview, global
TopicsGrounding queries grouped into thematic clustersPreview, global
Citation ShareYour share of all citations for a query; observational only, no competitor domains, no traffic share, no quality scoresPreview, global
CompareTwo time periods of citation activity, overlaidPreview, global
data-nosnippet supportPublisher control over what Bing may excerpt, relevant to AI summariesLive

Microsoft's own words position the report as "an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling", and it markets the same dashboard to advertisers as visibility into "where their content is showing up in AI answers".

The comparison SEOs actually make is with Google. Search Console's Generative AI reports arrived on 3rd June 2026, four months after Bing's, and report impressions only: no citations, no retrieval queries, no clicks and no CTR. Bing's report tells you what cited you and why; Google's tells you how often you appeared.

None of the BWT features has a general-availability date yet; everything above is preview. That is worth remembering before building reporting workflows on it.

Copilot and Bing AI availability tracker

Feature and market status for Microsoft's AI search surfaces, updated every time Microsoft expands.

The table below is the state of the rollout as of the date at the top of this page; we update it every time Microsoft expands or retires a surface.

Surface or featureStatusSinceNotes
Copilot Search in BingWorldwideEverywhere except Russia and China; bing.com desktop and the Bing mobile app
Search mode in the Copilot appAvailablecopilot.com, iOS, Android and Copilot in Edge; announced in the Fall Release wave, US first with the UK and Canada following, per-market completion never announced
Copilot CheckoutUS onlyCopilot.com plus the mobile apps since April 2026; PayPal, Stripe and Shopify; 500,000+ merchant catalog; no second market found as of
Brand AgentsWaitlistOn-site conversational agents for Shopify merchants via Microsoft Clarity; WooCommerce added April 2026
AI Performance report (BWT)Preview, globalCitation-level reporting across Copilot and Bing AI summaries; no GA date announced
AI Visibility Insights (BWT)Preview, globalIntents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare
AI Max for Search campaignsOpen pilotAnnounced 21st April 2026; delivers ads on Copilot Search and Copilot Answers
Offer Highlights adsEnglish-speaking marketsRetail product-detail ads in Copilot, Edge and Bing; Best Buy first
Copilot Mode in EdgeRetiredRetired ; features folded into default Edge on desktop and mobile, some market-gated
Bing Search APIsRetiredAll SKUs decommissioned; migration path is Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents
Web IQ grounding APIsInterest form onlyNo public availability, pricing or dates announced

Getting cited by Copilot: SEO for Microsoft's AI search

Microsoft publishes actual guidance and actual citation data, so this is the one AI surface where you can check whether advice works.

Microsoft is the only search company publishing both sides of the AI visibility question: how it thinks retrieval works, and per-site data to check yourself against.

On the how-it-works side, Bing's May 2026 index essay draws the line that matters: "search indexing was built to help humans decide what to read. Grounding indexing is being built to help AI systems decide what to say."

In practice that means freshness, provenance and clear passage-level answers, the same fundamentals that earn ranking, with one addition: an AI system can decline to answer, so being the source that resolves a question is the visibility win.

Microsoft's concrete guidance thread started with "Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers" in October 2025, and its webmaster blog now routinely answers classic SEO questions in AI-visibility terms.

The controls are classic too. Bing respects the standard robots and snippet controls, and added data-nosnippet support in October 2025 for excerpt-level control. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and the AI Performance report shows which content Copilot and Bing AI summaries actually cite, and for which grounding queries.

Our working view matches what we wrote for Google's AI surfaces: there is no separate optimization discipline here, but Bing is the one place you can measure citations directly, which makes it the honest test bed for any GEO claim.

Frequently asked questions

What is Copilot Search?

Copilot Search is Microsoft's AI answer experience: a dedicated AI results page on Bing (live worldwide except Russia and China since April 2025) and a Search mode inside the Copilot app (since November 2025). Both answer with cited sources drawn from the Bing index.

Is Copilot in Bing the same as Microsoft 365 Copilot?

No. Consumer Copilot (copilot.com, the Copilot app, Copilot in Bing, Edge and Windows) is the free assistant this page covers. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the paid workplace product inside Office apps, and GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant. Usage figures that span the whole "Copilot family" mix all of them, which is why no consumer-only user count exists.

How do I see when AI answers cite my site?

Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and open the AI Performance report, in public preview since February 2026. It shows total citations, cited pages and the grounding queries behind them across Copilot and Bing AI summaries, with intent, topic, citation-share and comparison views added in June 2026. Google's equivalent reports impressions only.

Where is Copilot Checkout available?

The US only, as of August 2026: on Copilot.com since January 2026 and the Copilot mobile apps since April 2026, with PayPal, Stripe and Shopify as payment and platform partners. Microsoft has promised expansion "across the Copilot ecosystem" without naming markets or dates.

What happened to the Bing Search APIs?

Microsoft decommissioned them completely on 11th August 2025, ending raw programmatic SERP access after fifteen years. The recommended migration is Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents, and the longer-term successor is Web IQ, the grounding API suite announced in June 2026 that so far exists only behind an interest form.

What AI model powers Copilot?

GPT-5 arrived in consumer Copilot on 7th August 2025, launch day, with Smart Mode routing queries to the right model variant across all markets and platforms. Microsoft has not announced a consumer default-model change we have verified since, so we date the claim rather than assert a current default.

What is Bing's search market share?

4.46% worldwide in July 2026 per Statcounter, against Google's 91.32%. Over the preceding year Bing ran from 4.02% (July 2025) to a 5.14% peak (April 2026) before easing. Statcounter counts page-view referrals rather than users, so the share is directional rather than a census.

Written and maintained by Akash Mansukhani, Keywords Everywhere. See how we source and correct this page.
Spotted a change we have not covered? Ranking volatility, a new SERP test, a platform change: email us a tip and we will credit you if we cover it.
Cite this page: Keywords Everywhere, "Microsoft Copilot & Bing: AI Search Updates and Citation Tracker", last updated 13th Aug 2026, https://keywordseverywhere.com/news/microsoft-copilot-updates/