Microsoft AI Performance Dashboard Explained: What This New Tool Tracks and How Marketers Should Use It

The Microsoft AI Performance dashboard is the first free tool from a major search platform that shows you exactly when and where your content gets cited in AI-generated answers. That means you can now see which of your pages AI trusts enough to reference, which grounding queries trigger those citations, and how your AI search visibility changes over time.

But measurement alone won’t help you. Most marketers will open this dashboard, see their citation counts, and have no idea what to do next. Let’s break down what each metric means, how to set it up, and a framework for turning AI citation data into a visibility strategy that drives measurable impact.

• What the Microsoft AI Performance dashboard tracks
• How grounding queries work (and why they matter more than keywords)
• Why most marketers will misread this data
• The G.R.O.U.N.D. framework for AI search visibility
• What marketers should do now
• FAQs about the Microsoft AI Performance dashboard

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What the Microsoft AI Performance dashboard tracks

The Microsoft AI Performance dashboard tracks how often your content appears as a cited source in AI-generated answers. It covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, newer AI visibility features, and select partner integrations. The dashboard sits inside Bing Webmaster Tools, and any verified site owner can access it for free.

Nine core metrics make up the AI Performance dashboard. Each one measures a different dimension of how AI interacts with your content.

1. Total citations

Total citations show how many times your site was visibly referenced as a source in AI-generated answers during a selected time range. This tells you whether AI is using your content at all. It does not indicate ranking, authority, or how prominently your content appeared within a specific answer.

2. Average cited pages

Average cited pages show the daily average of unique URLs from your site that get cited. A high number means AI pulls from a broad range of your content. A low number means AI relies on one or two pages, which creates a concentration risk.

3. Grounding queries

Grounding queries reveal the key phrases AI used when retrieving content that was cited. These are grouped phrases summarizing citation activity across multiple AI answers, not exact user prompts. You can think of them as the AI’s version of search queries. (More on these in the next section.)

4. Page-level citation activity

Page-level citation activity shows which specific URLs from your site get cited most often. This helps you identify your “citation magnets” and understand how citation activity distributes across your site.

5. Grounding query-page mapping (newest feature)

This feature connects grounding queries to cited pages in both directions. Click a grounding query to see which pages were cited for it. Click a page to see which grounding queries drive its citations.

This creates a direct optimization loop between queries and pages that didn’t exist before. One grounding query can map to multiple pages, and one page can appear across multiple grounding queries.

6. Intents

Intents classify each grounding query by purpose, such as informational, commercial, navigational, or local. This shows whether your citations skew toward research-stage questions or buying-stage ones.

7. Topics

Topics group related grounding queries into broader thematic clusters instead of listing them one by one. This gets you closer to how content planning actually works, since teams build around subject areas rather than individual query strings.

8. Citation Share

Citation Share shows what percentage of citations for a grounding query went to your site versus every other site cited for that same query. This tells you how much of the available visibility you’re actually capturing, not just whether you show up at all. 

It does not name which other sites make up the remaining share, so it isn’t a competitor benchmarking tool. For that level of detail, OmniSEO® shows which competitors are being cited alongside or instead of you for the same queries, across Microsoft’s ecosystem and beyond.

9. Compare

Compare lets you set a second time period side by side with your current one. This shows whether a metric is trending up or down instead of leaving you to read a single snapshot.

What the dashboard won’t tell you

A few important caveats before you start making decisions based on this data:

• The data represents a sample of overall citation activity as opposed to a complete log.
• Citation counts may differ across views (grounding queries vs. pages vs. timeline).
• Data refreshes daily with a short processing delay.
• The dashboard does not include click-through data. You can see citations, but not whether they drove traffic.
• It only covers Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are not included.
• Very low or infrequent citation activity may not surface in the dashboard at all.
• The dashboard only reflects content eligible for indexing. If your robots.txt blocks Bingbot or GPTBot, your data will be empty.

How grounding queries work (and why they matter more than keywords)

Grounding queries are the phrases AI systems use internally to find content before generating an answer. They show up in the AI Performance dashboard as short, grouped phrases with citation counts next to each one. And they’re the most actionable data points in the entire report.

Here’s how the retrieval process works when someone asks AI a question:

1. A user asks Copilot something like “What’s the best way to reduce cart abandonment for my Shopify store?”
2. The AI breaks that question into smaller sub-queries (a process called query fan-out)
3. The AI searches for sources that match each sub-query
4. The AI retrieves, evaluates, and cites the most relevant pages
5. Those sub-queries become the grounding queries you see in your AI Performance dashboard, showing up as phrases like “cart abandonment reduction strategies ecommerce”

The gap between what the user asked and what the AI searched for is where the optimization opportunity lives. Your keyword strategy targets what humans type into Google. Grounding queries show what AI searches for when building its answers. Those are different inputs, and they favor different content structures.

How grounding queries differ from keywords:

Why most marketers will misread this data

The biggest mistake marketers will make with the Microsoft AI Performance dashboard is treating citation counts like traffic metrics. Citations measure AI trust, not user engagement. That distinction changes how you should act on the data.

Here’s what most marketers will get wrong:

• Chasing total citations as a vanity metric: A high citation count feels good, but it means nothing without context. Which pages drive those citations? Which grounding queries trigger them? A single blog post generating 80% of your citations may look impressive on the surface, but it signals a fragile AI presence that could drop overnight if that page goes stale.
• Assuming citations equal traffic: The dashboard explicitly does not track clicks. A citation means AI referenced your page in an answer, and it does not necessarily mean a user visited your site. Those are two different outcomes, and confusing them leads to bad prioritization.
• Ignoring grounding queries entirely: Most marketers will go straight to the pages view because it feels familiar, like checking which pages rank in Google Search Console. But the grounding queries tab is where the real insight lives. It tells you what topics AI associates with your brand, and more importantly, which topics it doesn’t.
• Treating this like Google Search Console data: AI Performance metrics and traditional search metrics measure fundamentally different things. Comparing them side by side without understanding the difference leads to wrong conclusions.
• Mistaking Citation Share for competitor benchmarking: Citation Share shows your slice of citations for a query, not who else picked up the rest. Confusing the two can lead you to over- or underestimate how exposed you actually are to competitors within Microsoft’s ecosystem.

To see the difference clearly, look at how traditional SEO metrics compare to AI search visibility metrics:

The real value of this dashboard is understanding how AI interprets your content compared to how many times it cites you. Grounding query data tells you what topics AI connects to your brand, and page-level data tells you which content AI trusts most. The combination tells you where you’re strong, where you’re invisible, and where to invest next.

The G.R.O.U.N.D. framework for AI search visibility

So you have the data. Now what do you do with it?

We’ve put together a framework for turning AI Performance dashboard data into an optimization strategy. Each letter maps to a specific action you can take with the data the dashboard gives you.

What marketers should do now

Microsoft has kept adding to the AI Performance dashboard: grounding query-page mapping, then Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare. Most marketers haven’t opened any of it yet. That’s your early-mover window.

Set up the dashboard today

Go to bing.com/webmasters, verify your site, and click ‘AI Performance’ in the left nav. The dashboard loads with 30 days of data by default. If it looks empty on first login, give it a day or two. Export your grounding queries and page-level citation data (CSV or Excel) as your baseline.

Audit your top pages for citability

Pull your top 20 revenue-driving pages. Check if they appear in the page-level citation view. If they don’t, review their structure: Clear headings, direct answers in the first sentence, specific entity names, and fresh data points.

Compare grounding queries against your keyword strategy

Your SEO keyword list targets what humans search, while grounding queries show what AI retrieves. Where they overlap, you’re covered. Where they diverge, you have content gaps worth closing.

Pull up the Topics view before you start this comparison. Grounding queries that would’ve taken several rows to review individually now show up pre-grouped by subject, which makes it easier to spot an entire theme missing from your keyword plan instead of catching it one query at a time.

Build a citation tracking baseline

Record your current citation counts, top grounding queries, and cited pages today. You need a starting point to measure whether future changes move the numbers. Check in weekly to catch sudden shifts, and run a monthly review to assess whether your optimization efforts are working.

With Citation Share and Compare now available, add your current share percentage to that baseline, too. From here, use Compare to check the trend over time instead of manually re-exporting and comparing spreadsheets yourself.

Go beyond Bing for full AI visibility

The AI Performance dashboard only covers Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. For full coverage across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, you need additional tracking.

OmniSEO® tracks your brand’s visibility across every major AI search engine from one platform, with competitor benchmarking and full-funnel attribution. You can also supplement with tools like Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit or Ahrefs Brand Radar.

FAQs about the Microsoft AI Performance dashboard

Your competitors are already showing up in AI answers. Are you?

The Microsoft AI Performance dashboard gives you the data to find out. And with the G.R.O.U.N.D. framework, you have a playbook for acting on what you find. But Bing only shows part of the picture.

With 30+ years of experience and a team of 750+ digital experts, WebFX helps businesses like yours stay ahead of search shifts like this. Our proprietary OmniSEO® platform tracks your brand’s visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and more — providing real-time insights, citation tracking, competitor benchmarking, and full-funnel attribution across every major search and AI platform.

Start turning AI visibility into measurable growth today. Contact us online or call 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about OmniSEO® and our AI search optimization services.