Guide · 2026
How to audit your brand's AEO & Copilot visibility
To audit your AEO and Copilot visibility, open Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report to see your Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, and citation share across Copilot; confirm your robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers (bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot); then verify your schema and llms.txt so engines can parse and trust your pages.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about being retrievable and citable by the engines that answer questions directly. With 68% of Google searches now ending without a click (SparkToro / Similarweb, 2026), the citation inside the AI answer is often the entire impression you get. Unlike generative Share-of-Voice tracking, this audit uses hard first-party data — Microsoft now reports exactly which of your pages Copilot cites.
Step 1: Open the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft shipped the AI Performance report to Bing Webmaster Tools in public preview in Feb 2026 (Bing Blogs, 2026). It shows how your content is used across Microsoft Copilot and partner experiences (including ChatGPT's web results, which are Bing-powered). Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools first — it's the single most important AEO instrument, because Google offers no equivalent.
Step 2: Read your two core metrics — Total Citations and Average Cited Pages
Total Citations = how many times your site was cited as a source over the period (frequency, not prominence). Average Cited Pages = daily average of unique URLs referenced. Read together: high citations + low avg cited pages means one or two pages carry you — fragile. A healthy profile spreads citations across many URLs.
Step 3: Use the new Intent, Topics, and Citation Share views
In June 2026 Bing added Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare (Bing Blogs, June 2026). Intents classifies grounding queries (Informational, Commercial, etc.) — check you win commercial intent. Topics shows thematic visibility. Citation Share = your relative share of citations for a topic (your AEO market share). Compare benchmarks periods. Also mine the Grounding Queries list — the exact phrases AI used to retrieve you.
Step 4: Confirm AI crawlers are allowed in robots.txt
Training and search crawling are now separate crawlers (No Hacks, 2026). For AEO you must allow the search/retrieval agents: bingbot (Copilot + ChatGPT search), OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI search, distinct from GPTBot training), PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot / Claude-SearchBot. A blanket Disallow: / or an over-eager "stop AI scraping" block will silently erase you from AI answers. To opt out of training while staying citable, block GPTBot + Google-Extended but keep the SearchBots allowed.
Step 5: Verify your schema markup
Confirm valid JSON-LD for Organization (consistent name/logo + sameAs), FAQPage (the format AI Overviews and Copilot preferentially lift), and Article (author + dates on every guide). Validate with Google's Rich Results Test + Schema.org's validator — one malformed block can invalidate the entity graph.
Step 6: Check for an llms.txt file
Add llms.txt (and optionally llms-full.txt) at your root: a clean, link-rich map of canonical pages. Emerging convention, not a confirmed ranking factor, but low-cost. Confirm it resolves and lists priority URLs.
Step 7: Log a baseline and set a re-audit cadence
Record today's Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, and Citation Share. Re-audit monthly — first-party Microsoft data makes month-over-month movement the cleanest AEO signal available.
How is this different from a GEO / Share of Voice audit?
This AEO audit answers "which of my pages get cited, and can crawlers reach them?" from first-party Bing data. A GEO audit answers "how prominently is my brand named in the prose, vs competitors?" from a prompt basket. You need both.
Ravenopus runs this audit and fixes the gaps — robots.txt, schema, and the content that earns Copilot citations — as part of full-cycle growth on one flat monthly retainer. Book a diagnostic to see your citation baseline.
Keep reading
- Previous: How to measure your brand's AI Share of Voice.
- Next: How to structure content to be cited by AI.
- See how the audit fits the whole loop at our answer engine optimization page.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I see how often AI cites my website?
In Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. It shows Total Citations and Average Cited Pages across Microsoft Copilot and partner AI experiences, plus Intent, Topics, and Citation Share views. Google currently offers no equivalent first-party AI citation report.
Does blocking GPTBot stop me from being cited in AI answers?
Not necessarily. GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler; OAI-SearchBot handles search citations. Blocking GPTBot opts you out of training while, if you allow OAI-SearchBot, keeping you eligible for ChatGPT search citations. But blocking bingbot or the SearchBots will remove you from AI answers.
Which crawlers must I allow for AEO?
The search and retrieval agents: bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot or Claude-SearchBot. Verify none are disallowed in your robots.txt.
What is llms.txt and do I need it?
It is a plain-text file at your domain root that maps the canonical pages you want AI engines to ingest. It is an emerging convention rather than a confirmed ranking factor, but it is cheap to ship and gives crawlers a clean index of your best content.
What schema matters most for AI citations?
Organization schema with sameAs links, FAQPage schema for the question-answer format AI Overviews lift, and Article schema with author and dates. Validate every block.
How often should I run this audit?
Monthly. The Bing AI Performance report is first-party data, so month-over-month changes in Total Citations and Citation Share are the cleanest signal of whether your AEO work is landing.