Search behaviour is changing, and fewer people are solely relying on traditional search engines like Google or Bing to find information.
AI-powered chat bots, such as ChatGPT and Copilot, have seen a rise in popularity, with users increasingly turning to these tools to ask conversational questions in return for quick and direct answers.
Instead of typing a search query and browsing through a list of websites in search of the information you’re looking for, these tools do the work for you.
They work by aggregating and synthesising information from several sources across the web to provide a single, clear response rather than directing users to a list of links.
Notably, they also allow include follow-up questions within the same conversation by retaining the context of the original query.
As a result, many websites have seen a decline in organic search traffic, as users can get what they need without needing to click through to a website.
In response to this shift in search behaviour, Bing has added an AI Performance report within Webmaster Tools. This report gives site owners visibility into how their content is referenced or cited by AI systems.
This report provides website owners with analytics to help them understand how their content is being referenced or cited in these AI bots.
It provides clear analytics on how content performs within generative search and helps bridge the gap created by falling organic visits.
Although still in Beta, the report offers flexible date ranges, so you can analyse performance over a particular period of time.
This makes it easier to identify short-term fluctuations as well as tracking longer term trends in how your content is being used by AI systems.
The report focuses on two metrics, total citations and the average cited pages.
Total citations show how often your site is referenced as a source of information in AI-generated answers, while average cited pages measure the average number of unique pages cited each day.
Together, these metrics provide a clearer picture of how visible the content on your website is outside of traditional search results.
Rather than measuring the number of clicks or impressions, they show how often your content is being used to generate AI answers.
A higher total citation count means your site is being referenced more frequently, which signals stronger presence and authority within AI responses.
A higher average of cited pages shows that multiple pages on your site are being used and contributing value, rather than just a small number of high performing URLs.
The report then breaks this data down further, listing the queries that have triggered citations, along with the number of times your website was referenced for each query.
This information shows the specific questions or topics where your site is appearing in AI generated answers.
It also provides details into which URLs are being cited and how frequently, making it easy to identify the strongest content or content that may need optimising.
As AI continues to shape how people discover information, tools like this AI performance report can help website owners adapt their strategies.
Curious to know how we can help enhance the visibility of your website in generative search experiences? Get in touch with the team at Engage Web today.
- Bing Webmaster Tools introduces AI Performance report in Beta - February 12, 2026
- ChatGPT adds visual knowledge panels and top stories - February 5, 2026
- How to filter out Singaporean and Chinese traffic in Google Analytics 4 - February 2, 2026
