In November 2025, Microsoft quietly rolled out a significant update to Bing’s Copilot search experience, adding AI-generated overviews directly into search results, similar to what Google has done with AI Overviews. It didn’t make huge headlines at the time. But in February 2026, our team at Whole Whale stumbled onto something in Bing Webmaster Tools that stopped us cold.
*And no, it wasn’t the shock that people use Bing, tho that was a close runner-up.*
Bing had released a new AI Performance Report inside Webmaster Tools, and the data it revealed is one of the most honest, sobering looks at what AI search is actually doing to website traffic that we’ve seen yet.
What Is the Bing AI Performance Report?
Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Search Console, now includes an AI Performance report that tracks how your website is being cited across Bing’s AI-powered tools. That includes:
- Bing Copilot search overviews, the AI-generated answers that appear at the top of Bing search results
- Microsoft Copilot, the standalone AI assistant
The report gives you two key metrics:
- Total Citations: How many times your website appeared in an AI-generated answer across Bing’s AI tools
- Cited Pages: Which specific pages on your site are being pulled into those AI responses
Notably, the data goes back to November 2025, exactly when the Copilot search update rolled out. That timing turned out to be very revealing.
What We Found When We Looked at Our Own Data
Our team member Rachel cross-referenced Whole Whale’s AI Performance report with our actual site analytics, and the picture that emerged was striking.
Starting in November 2025, our organic traffic from Bing dropped by roughly three quarters, almost overnight.
Snapshot of our inbound Bing traffic in GA4
At the same time, the AI Performance report showed that Whole Whale’s content was being cited across Bing’s AI tools, 48,000 times across 34 pages over roughly three months.
Snapshot of Microsoft Bing webmaster tools: AI performance tab now in beta
So the natural question: how many of those 48,000 AI citations actually sent someone to our website?
Snapshot of inbound clicks from Copilot
14 clicks.
Not 14,000. Not 1,400. Fourteen. That’s a click-through rate of approximately 0.03%.
To put that in perspective: even a modest display ad typically sees click-through rates around 0.1%. We had expected AI citations might convert at maybe 1–2%. The reality was roughly 60 times lower than that.
Why Isn’t Bing Showing Click Data Directly?
Here’s what’s interesting, and a little telling. The AI Performance report currently shows citations and cited pages, but there is no click data tab. You can see how often your content is being used to answer questions. You cannot see how often that led anyone to actually visit your site.
To piece together the click picture, you have to cross-reference your analytics separately, and when you do, the math is not encouraging.
It’s worth noting that Bing organic traffic figures include both traditional results and AI overview appearances, so isolating the exact impact of AI overviews requires some careful analysis. But the overall trend is hard to argue with: more AI citations, far fewer clicks.
What This Means for Your Website and Content Strategy
Let’s be direct: this data represents a fundamental shift in what it means to “rank” in search. Your content can be actively informing thousands of AI-generated answers (doing real work, reaching real people) and sending almost no one back to your website in the traditional sense.
That’s not a bug. That’s the feature.
For nonprofits and mission-driven organizations, this has real implications:
- Thin or outdated content won’t get cited. AI systems pull from content that is clear, authoritative, and genuinely useful. If your pages haven’t been updated in years, they’re less likely to make it into AI answers at all.
- Your AI Brand Footprint matters now. Those 48,000 citations represent Whole Whale’s content showing up in decision-making moments, even if the person never clicks through. That’s brand presence, trust-building, and mission advancement happening in a new layer of the web.
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is no longer theoretical. Writing content structured to directly answer questions (clearly, concisely, with real expertise) is now the primary way your content earns visibility in AI-driven search.
The Transparency Era Is Just Beginning
One important takeaway from all of this: Bing releasing this AI Performance report is a sign of things to come. Every major platform is going to face pressure to show creators and publishers what AI is doing with their content. This is transparency level one.
Google will face the same pressure. So will every AI assistant that trains on or cites web content. The data will come, and when it does, organizations that have been building genuine content authority will be in the best position to understand and act on it.
For now, Bing Webmaster Tools is giving us the first real window into this new reality. And what it’s showing us is that the rules of the game have changed significantly.
The clicks aren’t coming back the way they used to. But the citations, and the influence that comes with them, are very much real. The question is whether your content strategy is built for this new environment.
