Bing Webmaster Tools updates AI reporting on goals, topics, citation shares and comparisons

Microsoft is now officially releasing a preview of a new AI performance report within Bing Webmaster Tools that now includes Targets, Topics, Share Citations, and Comparisons. We saw a Microsoft demo of these features in late April but now they are starting to roll out to users.

As a reminder, Bing officially launched its AI performance report in February. Google didn’t release its AI report on Search Console until June, and it seemed forced.

What’s new. “These new capabilities build on that foundation by helping publishers better understand why their content is being featured, what broad topics they’re appearing in, how their presence stacks up against other cited sources, and how citation patterns change over time,” wrote Microsoft’s Krishna Madhavan.

The purpose: The new Objectives feature in Bing Webmaster Tools now divides the basic queries in the AI ​​Performance report into broad categories, such as Informational, Commercial, Navigation, Learn and Solve, Research, Create, Location, and more. This in a sense helps you to understand the purpose behind the prompt or question. “This helps publishers go beyond just seeing which queries generated citations and begin to understand the broader context of the queries our systems associate with these citation impressions,” writes Krishna Madhavan.

An example provided was that an e-commerce publisher might get strong exposure to AI experiences that are related to or focused on shopping, while an academic publisher might find that their content is often based on research or interaction that is focused on learning. These insights can help publishers better match the structure and depth of content to the types of experiences when AI systems present their content.

Topics: Topics in AI performance report group related fundamental questions into broad thematic clusters. AI systems brainstorm ideas and themes instead of single keywords, Microsoft explains. So by having topics, it will help publishers to understand visibility in the same theme structure that modern AI systems use to organize information.

So for example, queries like “solar panels,” “solar energy efficiency,” and “residential solar installation,” for example, might all be grouped under a broader topic like Solar Energy. “This creates a natural way to analyze AI visibility. Content teams and publishers tend to think in terms of themes, editorial areas, and audience interests rather than individual keywords. Topics help bridge that gap by turning basic query data into a more contextual view of AI engagement,” Microsoft wrote.

One note, “during the preview phase, some labels may still be broad – especially in very specialized or niche domains – but the system is already starting to reveal meaningful patterns,” writes Microsoft.

Quotes. Microsoft also added citation sharing, which shows how much citation space your site is getting for a certain basic query. Citation share is calculated as the percentage of citations cited on your site out of all citations displayed on all sites for that same query. “This helps publishers understand not only if they’ve been cited, but how much exposure they’ve received among the full set of cited sources for that query,” explains Microsoft.

Microsoft added these points:

• “This can provide a more direct view of how visibility is evolving over time. Publishers can begin to identify areas where their content has strong and growing representation in AI-generated experiences, as well as areas where visibility may be more fragmented across multiple sources.”
• “Importantly, Citation Share is designed as an observational metric – not a ranking system or competitive scoreboard. It does not identify competing domains, represent traffic share, or assign quality scores to content.”
• “The AI ​​targeted ecosystem is dynamic in nature. Citation patterns can change due to changes in user behavior, evolving models, new signals, partner update cycles, and broader changes across the web.”

Compare. With all that, you can also compare changes over time. The comparison feature allows you to cover the previous period directly in the current reporting view.

“Comparison is designed to help publishers see changes over time. Citation performance can be influenced by many factors including emerging AI models, competing content, new signals, and changing user demand,” Microsoft wrote.

Here’s how it looks:

Why do we care. While we don’t yet have clickthrough and clickthrough rate data, Microsoft keeps adding more to its AI performance reports.

I’m hoping that one day we’ll get click data, but I don’t expect to see that from Google or Microsoft anytime soon.