Microsoft previewed four new AI reporting features for Bing Webmaster Tools: citation share, grounding query-intent labels, grounding query topic labels, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)-focused recommendations.
Krishna Madhavan, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft AI and Bing, previewed the features during a presentation at SEO Week in New York City. Slides shared by attendees on X preview four additions to the AI Performance dashboard.
Citation Share would show the percentage of citations a site captures within a specific grounding query, sitting alongside the raw citation counts already available in the dashboard.
Grounding Query Intent would classify queries into 15 predefined intent labels. Visible labels in the shared screenshots include Learning, Informational Search, Navigational, Research, Comparison, Planning, Conversational, and Content Filtered.
Grounding Query Topic would group queries under topic labels, giving sites a second classification layer alongside intent.
The fourth addition, GEO-focused recommendations, would surface guidance tied to AI visibility. The slide shows recommendation areas, including content structure and crawlability, indexing and canonicalization signals, structured data adoption, and structured data quality.
Microsoft hasn’t published an official blog post about these features. The information available comes from attendee screenshots of the presentation.
https://x.com/ClaraSoteras/status/2048768514677244182?s=20
Why This Matters
The AI Performance dashboard launched in public preview in February, giving sites their first look at how often Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI summaries cite their content. Microsoft expanded it in March with a feature that mapped grounding queries to the specific pages cited for them.
Citation Share would expand that. Citation counts show visibility, while a share metric provides competitive context, indicating if a site captures most citations or appears with others for a query.
The intent and topic classifications could fix data limits in the dashboard. Queries vary in phrasing, making trend spotting hard. Grouping by intent and topic allows sites to gauge visibility against shared categories instead of individual phrases.
GEO recommendations are least defined. Labels imply focus areas are familiar SEO basics like crawlability, indexing, canonicalization, and structured data, but Microsoft hasn’t specified how recommendations are generated or triggered.
Looking Ahead
Microsoft hasn’t announced release dates for any of the four features. Details on Citation Share calculation, intent and topic taxonomies, and GEO recommendation methods remain undocumented publicly.
Treat these as previews, not shipped features. Watch for official Bing Webmaster or Microsoft Advertising blog posts confirming scope and timing.
