Bing Webmaster Tools Now Shows Your AI Citation Topics

On October 13, 2026, Microsoft Bing launched Topics Portfolio, a beta feature in the AI Performance report of Bing Webmaster Tools. It groups the queries where Bing's AI cites your site into topics, estimates how much demand and competition each topic has, and lists queries where other sites get cited and yours does not.

What we know

The announcement: Bing's webmaster blog published it on October 13, 2026, signed by Krishna Madhavan, Saral Nigam and Vivek Jain. Bing labels it a beta.
What it groups: "grounding queries", which Bing described in February 2026 as the phrases its AI uses to retrieve content it then cites in an answer. Topics are broad clusters; Bing's examples are football, taxes and AI chatbots.
The columns, per Bing: the topic; Topic Size, the approximate citations across all sites in the chosen period, used as a demand signal; Sites Cited, which shows how crowded the topic is; and the approximate number of distinct queries.
Opportunities: below the table, Top Opportunity Queries lists queries where other sites appear and yours does not. Volumes are shown as ranges, not exact numbers.
Inside each topic: three KPI cards (topic size, your own citations in it, number of queries) and two tables: queries where you already appear, and opportunity queries.
Time window: one, two or three months.
Who sees it: Bing says the tab only appears if there is sufficient data for your site. Topics with too little presence are hidden, so a small site may see a short list or no feature at all.
Where the citations come from: the AI Performance report, in public preview since February 2026, counts citations in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, according to Bing. In June, Bing added intents, topics, citation share and period comparison.

What changes and what doesn't

What changes: for the first time, this report shows the gap. You get real Bing queries, inside your own topics, where the AI cites other sites instead of yours. Until now the report mostly showed where you were already cited.

What doesn't: the report still counts citations, not visits, and the announcement says nothing about clicks. The numbers are approximate, and Bing asks you to treat them as planning signals rather than precise measurement. Topic labels are AI-generated and can be wrong, and Bing warns that a competitor's branded queries may show up as opportunities. It is Bing data only: it tells you nothing about how Google or other assistants cite you.

How to tell if it affects you

Make sure your site is in Bing Webmaster Tools. If you already use Google Search Console, Bing lets you import sites from it without verifying again.
Open AI Performance and look for the Topics Portfolio tab, next to "Citations & Pages". If it isn't there, Bing doesn't have enough data on your site yet: start with the pages and queries where it already cites you.
Pick the three-month window and start with your strongest topics, where your citations are concentrated. That is Bing's own advice, and where a new page has the most context.
Filter opportunity queries before writing anything. Drop those carrying another company's brand and those about products or services you don't offer. For the rest, ask whether any page on your site answers that question directly. If none does, that is the missing page or paragraph.
Read topic size and sites cited together. A topic with high demand and few cited sites is usually a better bet than one with high demand and hundreds of competitors. That is a rule of thumb, not a Bing formula.
Check back monthly. Note your citations per topic and see whether they rise after you publish or improve a page. If a topic or query doesn't fit your business, give it a thumbs down: Bing says that feedback goes to the team tuning the classification.

Sources

Updates: this note will be updated if Bing drops the beta label, adds clicks to the report or changes which sites can see it.