This guide is part of our series on how to optimize for AI search.
Everyone is talking about ChatGPT and Perplexity. Meanwhile, Microsoft Copilot is quietly sitting on the desktops of hundreds of millions of people who use Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365 every day. It is the AI assistant most people use without even thinking about it.
If you are focused on AI visibility, ignoring Copilot leaves a massive blind spot. Let's close it.
How Copilot works under the hood
Here is the key thing to understand: Copilot is grounded in Bing. Every time a user asks Copilot a question, it runs a Bing search behind the scenes, retrieves the top results, and synthesizes an answer with citations pointing back to those sources.
This is fundamentally different from how ChatGPT works. ChatGPT can answer from training data alone, pulling from what it learned during pre-training. Copilot always checks the live web through Bing. Every single response is anchored to current search results.
The practical implication is straightforward: if your content ranks on Bing, you have a real shot at appearing in Copilot's answers. If Bing does not know you exist, Copilot won't either.
This also means Copilot responses change in real time. Update your content today, get re-indexed by Bing tomorrow, and Copilot may cite you the day after. The feedback loop is much tighter than with training-data-based models.
Bing SEO: the foundation of Copilot visibility
Most brands optimize exclusively for Google and assume Bing follows along. Sometimes it does. Often it does not. Bing has its own ranking algorithm with distinct preferences.
Here is what matters for Bing specifically:
Social signals carry real weight. Bing has publicly stated that social signals influence rankings. Shares on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms contribute to how Bing evaluates content authority. Google has been ambiguous about this for years. Bing is not.
Exact-match keywords still matter. Bing's natural language processing has improved, but it still gives more credit to exact keyword matches in titles, URLs, and headings than Google does. If you are targeting "project management software for architects," make sure that phrase appears verbatim in key locations.
Rich media gets attention. Bing favors pages with images, videos, and interactive elements. A wall of text that ranks fine on Google may underperform on Bing compared to a visually rich competitor.
Bing Webmaster Tools is a separate tool with separate data. Submit your sitemap, check your indexing status, and review your search performance. Many businesses have never even logged into Bing Webmaster Tools. That is free intelligence you are leaving on the table.
Page speed matters but Bing is more forgiving. Bing still factors in load time but is generally less aggressive about Core Web Vitals penalties than Google. Technical SEO basics (clean crawling, proper sitemaps, no broken links) matter more than chasing perfect performance scores.
For a broader view of how different AI platforms work, see our guides on getting mentioned by ChatGPT and getting mentioned by Gemini.
Bing Places for Business: the quick win nobody talks about
Think of Bing Places for Business as the Microsoft equivalent of Google Business Profile. It is a free listing where you provide your business name, address, phone number, hours, categories, photos, and description.
Most businesses have claimed their Google Business Profile. Very few have claimed their Bing Places listing. This is a gap you can close in 15 minutes.
Why it matters for Copilot: when users ask Copilot local or business-related questions ("best accounting firm near me," "recommend a coworking space in Lyon"), Copilot pulls from Bing's local data. If you are not in Bing Places, you are invisible for these queries.
The setup process is simple. Go to Bing Places, claim your listing, verify it (usually by phone or postcard), and fill out every field completely. Categories, hours, photos, a detailed description of what you do. The more complete your profile, the more data Copilot has to work with.
If you serve local customers, this is arguably the highest-ROI action in this entire guide. For more on AI visibility for businesses with a local component, see our article on AI visibility for local businesses.
Structured data that Copilot actually uses
Bing is aggressive about consuming structured data. More aggressive than Google in some cases. This matters because structured data helps Bing (and by extension Copilot) understand what your pages are about, what your business does, and how to categorize your offerings.
The schemas that make the biggest difference:
FAQ schema. If your page answers common questions, mark them up with FAQ schema. Copilot frequently pulls from FAQ-structured content when synthesizing answers.
Product schema. For e-commerce or SaaS, product markup (name, description, price, reviews, availability) gives Copilot concrete data points to reference when users ask about products in your category.
Organization schema. This tells Bing who you are as a business: name, logo, founding date, social profiles, contact information. It feeds directly into how Copilot understands your brand identity.
HowTo schema. For instructional content, HowTo markup makes your step-by-step processes machine-readable. Copilot loves pulling from this for practical questions.
Bing explicitly documents its support for these schema types. This is not speculation. If you have not added structured data to your key pages, you are making it harder for Copilot to cite you.
Copilot in Microsoft 365: the B2B angle
Here is where Copilot gets particularly interesting for B2B brands. Copilot is not just a chatbot on Bing. It is embedded in Microsoft 365: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams. Over 400 million people use these tools for work.
When an enterprise user asks Copilot a work-related question inside Microsoft 365, Copilot can pull from web content alongside internal documents. A procurement manager researching vendors in Word, a marketing director exploring tools in Teams, a CFO looking into solutions in Outlook: they all have Copilot at their fingertips.
This means your content can surface in contexts where buying decisions are actively being made. Not during casual browsing, but during work. That is a different level of intent.
To capitalize on this, make sure your content addresses the professional questions your target buyers ask. Comparison pages, pricing transparency, implementation guides, ROI calculators: the kind of content that helps someone build a business case.
Tracking your Copilot visibility
Measuring your presence in Copilot responses requires a two-pronged approach.
Bing Webmaster Tools gives you the search side. You can see which queries bring traffic from Bing, how your pages rank, and where your indexing gaps are. Since Copilot is grounded in Bing, your Bing search performance is a leading indicator of your Copilot visibility.
Mentionable gives you the AI side. It tracks whether AI platforms (including Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others) mention your brand when users ask relevant questions. Instead of manually testing prompts, you get systematic tracking across platforms so you can spot trends and compare your visibility across different AI engines.
The combination tells you both where you stand in the underlying search results (Bing) and what actually happens when users ask Copilot about your category.
For a complete walkthrough of tracking methods across all AI platforms, check out our guide on measuring AI visibility. And for a comparison of the best tracking tools available, see our roundup of AI visibility tools.
Your 5-step action plan
Step 1: Claim your Bing Places listing. Go to Bing Places for Business, set up your profile, verify it, and complete every field. This takes 15 minutes and covers your local visibility in Copilot.
Step 2: Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit your sitemap, check your indexation, and review your current Bing search performance. Fix any crawling or indexing issues.
Step 3: Add Schema.org markup to your key pages. Start with Organization schema site-wide, then add FAQ, Product, or HowTo schema to your most important content pages.
Step 4: Optimize your content for Bing's preferences. Review your top pages for exact-match keyword placement, rich media, and social sharing. Boost social distribution, especially on LinkedIn.
Step 5: Track with Mentionable. Set up monitoring for your brand and key competitors across Copilot and other AI platforms. Review weekly. Adjust your content strategy based on what prompts mention you and which ones do not.
Copilot is not the flashiest AI platform. It does not generate the most headlines. But it is embedded in the daily workflow of hundreds of millions of professionals. The brands that optimize for it now will have a compounding advantage as Copilot's role in Microsoft's ecosystem keeps expanding.
Start with the quick wins. Build from there.
Looking for the full picture on AI search optimization? Head back to our parent guide on optimizing for AI search. Or explore how Perplexity handles citations differently.
