Bing AI Dashboard Maps Grounding Queries To Cited Pages via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Bing Webmaster Tools added a feature to its AI Performance dashboard that connects grounding queries to cited pages.

The update lets you click a grounding query to see which pages on your site are cited for it. You can also go the other direction, selecting a page to see which grounding queries are driving its citations.

Microsoft announced the feature on the Microsoft Advertising blog, calling it a response to customer feedback and requests since the dashboard’s launch.

What Changed

When Microsoft introduced the AI Performance dashboard in February, it showed grounding queries and cited pages as separate views. You could see which queries AI used to retrieve content and which URLs got cited, but the two weren’t connected.

The new mapping feature links them. One grounding query can map to multiple pages, and one page can appear across multiple grounding queries.

That connection matters because grounding queries aren’t the same as user searches. They’re the phrases Bing’s retrieval system generates when constructing an AI answer. Knowing which of those phrases connect to which pages gives you something to work with when deciding where to focus content updates.

What Hasn’t Changed

The dashboard is still in public preview. It still covers AI experiences across Copilot, AI summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations.

The data still represents a sample of citation activity, not a complete log. And it still doesn’t include click-through data, which would tell you whether citations are driving traffic. That was the gap we noted when the dashboard first launched, and it hasn’t been addressed.

Google Search Console includes AI Overviews and AI Mode in standard Performance reporting, but Google has not introduced a separate AI citation report or page-level citation counts.

Looking Ahead

This is the first new capability Microsoft has highlighted since the dashboard entered public preview in February. Microsoft also referenced the dashboard when it rewrote the Bing Webmaster Guidelines to include “GEO” as a named optimization category.

The grounding query-to-page mapping is available now in Bing Webmaster Tools for verified sites.

Featured Image: Bangla press/Shutterstock

SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, ...