Dated October 24, 2026. Most law firms have no free way to see whether AI assistants cite their website. Bing has one. Its AI Performance report counts how often Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries use your pages as sources, and on October 13, 2026, Microsoft added a beta tab that groups those citations by topic. This note covers what the report shows, what it can’t tell you, and what to do with it. The wider picture is in our AI search guide.
What changed
Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview on February 10, 2026 (Bing). It covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, and reports:
- total citations in AI answers over a chosen period;
- average cited pages, the daily average of your pages used as sources;
- grounding queries, a sample of the phrases the AI used when it found the content it cited; and
- citations by page and over time.
On June 16, 2026, Microsoft began rolling out four more preview features (Bing): Intents, which sorts grounding queries into types including Local; Topics; Citation Share, your share of all citations for a query; and Compare, which overlays an earlier period.
The newest addition is Topics Portfolio, in beta since October 13, 2026 (Bing). It groups the queries where your site is cited into topics, shows how crowded each topic is, and lists “opportunity queries” where other sites are cited and yours is not. You can look back one, two or three months.
What it can’t tell you
Microsoft is careful about the limits, and firms should be too:
- Citations are not rankings or clicks. Microsoft says the counts do not show ranking, authority or placement within an answer (February post).
- Topics are approximate. The topic labels are AI-generated and “can occasionally be imperfect,” and the numbers are meant as directional signals (October post).
- Small sites may see little. Topics with too little activity are not shown, so a single-office firm may see few topics or none (October post).
- It is one engine. It says nothing about ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews.
What to check this week
| Check | Where | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Site verified | Bing Webmaster Tools | Your domain added and verified, sitemap submitted |
| Pages cited | AI Performance, by page | Your practice and location pages appear, not only the blog |
| Query types | Intents | Some Local and Commercial queries, not only Informational |
| Gaps | Topics Portfolio, opportunity queries | A short list of questions a client would ask that your pages could answer |
| Baseline | Compare | A saved monthly figure to measure changes against |
What this means for your firm
- Turn it on now. It is free, and a monthly baseline is only useful if you start keeping it. While you are there, check your Bing Places listing too; our local SEO guide covers it.
- Use the gaps as a writing list. An opportunity query that matches your practice is a page or an answer worth adding. Our law firm SEO guide covers how to write it.
- Report citations as a signal, not a result. A firm’s results are signed cases. Citation counts belong in a monthly note next to calls and cases, never in place of them.
The report is in preview and will change. We will add dated updates here when it does.
Marketing information, not legal advice. Pages that AI assistants cite are still lawyer advertising under your state’s rules; check with your bar and your own counsel.