Which Microsoft AI Products Are Included in Bing AI Performance Data?

When you look at your AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, it’s easy to assume the data only reflects what’s happening on Bing.com. 

But Microsoft’s AI is embedded across a much wider set of products, and the citation data you’re seeing may be coming from more places than you realise.

Here’s a clear overview of which Microsoft AI products contribute to the AI Performance report, which don’t, and what that means for your data interpretation.

The core source: Bing Copilot

The primary source of AI citation data in your report is Bing Copilot — the AI-powered conversational assistant built directly into Bing search. When someone searches on Bing and receives an AI-generated answer that cites your page, that interaction is what the AI Performance report was originally designed to capture.

Copilot on Bing responds to natural language queries, generates summarised answers, and credits external web pages as sources. It’s the most direct and consistent contributor to your citation data, and for most sites it’s the dominant source.

Microsoft Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com)

Microsoft Copilot, accessible at copilot.microsoft.com and through the Copilot app,  is a standalone AI assistant that runs on the same underlying technology as Bing Copilot. When users ask web-connected questions through this surface, it pulls from the web in much the same way as Bing’s integrated experience.

Citations generated through Microsoft Copilot’s web-connected mode are included in your Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance data. So if your page is cited in a Copilot answer on copilot.microsoft.com, it counts. The report doesn’t separate these out by surface; they’re aggregated together with Bing search citations.

Copilot in windows and microsoft edge

Microsoft has embedded Copilot into both Windows and the Edge browser. The sidebar Copilot in Edge and the Copilot button in Windows both connect to the same Bing-powered AI backend when handling web queries. Citations that occur through these surfaces are also captured in the AI Performance report.

This is worth knowing because it widens the potential audience for your citations beyond people who are actively searching on Bing.com. A user asking Copilot a question from their Windows taskbar or Edge sidebar can still generate a citation for your page, and that data flows into your Webmaster Tools report.

What’s not included

Not every Microsoft AI product contributes to your AI Performance data. A few important exclusions include:

•       Microsoft 365 Copilot: The Copilot assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams operates primarily on your organisation’s internal data and documents. It doesn’t crawl the public web for citations in the same way, so it doesn’t contribute to your Bing Webmaster Tools data.

•       GitHub Copilot: This is a code completion tool for developers and has nothing to do with web search or content citations. It’s not relevant to the AI Performance report.

•       Azure OpenAI Service: Businesses building their own AI applications on Azure’s OpenAI infrastructure aren’t pulling web citations through Bing Webmaster Tools. Any citations generated in those custom applications are outside the scope of your report.

•       Offline or document-grounded Copilot modes: When Copilot answers a question based solely on a document the user has uploaded, or operates without a web connection, no web citations are generated, and nothing is recorded in your report.

Quick reference: included vs not included

Why this matters for your data

Knowing that your citation data aggregates across multiple Bing-powered surfaces — not just Bing.com search — has a few practical implications.

First, it means your AI Performance numbers may be larger than you’d expect if you’re only thinking about Bing.com traffic. A meaningful share of citations could be coming from Copilot users on Edge or Windows who never opened a Bing search tab at all.

Second, it means the audience generating your citations is broader and more varied than classic Bing searches. Copilot users tend to ask longer, more conversational questions than traditional search users. If your content is earning citations across these surfaces, it’s likely because it answers that kind of conversational, question-driven query well, which is a useful signal about what’s working in your content strategy.

Third, the report doesn’t currently break down citations by surface. You can’t tell from the data alone whether a citation came from Bing.com, Edge sidebar, or the standalone Copilot app. It’s all reported together, so you’re working with aggregate data across the whole Bing-powered AI ecosystem.

At Embarque, we flag this to clients because it reframes what the AI Performance report is actually measuring. It’s not just your Bing search performance — it’s your visibility across the entire Bing-powered AI ecosystem, which is growing as Microsoft continues to embed Copilot more deeply into its products. That makes the report more valuable than it might first appear.

In summary

The Bing AI Performance report aggregates citations from all web-connected Microsoft Copilot surfaces, including Bing.com, copilot.microsoft.com, Edge, and Windows, into a single dataset.

It does not include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Azure OpenAI applications, or offline Copilot modes. Knowing what’s included and excluded helps you interpret citation numbers correctly and recognize that your AI visibility goes beyond Bing search alone.