Microsoft Copilot draws from Bing's index. Most AEO guides optimize for Google and assume the work transfers. It doesn't. As you work through the steps below, you'll close the Bing citation gap that most brands have never measured — and most competitors haven't noticed yet.
By William Bouch · Last updated September 27, 2026
Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) is built on GPT-4 models fine-tuned on Microsoft data and grounded with real-time Bing search results. When Copilot answers a factual query, it retrieves current Bing search results and synthesizes an answer from those sources — then cites the pages it used.
Unlike ChatGPT (Bing + OpenAI crawl), Claude (Anthropic crawl), or Gemini (Google), Copilot is exclusively grounded in Bing. Pages not indexed by Bing, or that block Bingbot, are invisible to Copilot regardless of their Google ranking.
Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) is the Bing equivalent of Google Search Console. Most site owners don't set it up because Google dominates their traffic — but for Copilot optimization it's mandatory. BWT gives you direct control over Bing crawl coverage, indexation status, and site health signals.
Many sites accidentally block Bingbot with wildcard rules or old crawl-budget restrictions. Copilot's crawler is bingbot. Verify it's explicitly allowed:
Bing's Entity Store is the structured knowledge base that Copilot draws from for entity-based queries — "Who is [person]?", "What is [company]?", "Where is [location]?". Getting your brand or person entity into the Bing Entity Store is a prerequisite for Copilot to confidently cite you as an authoritative source.
Add these in your Organization and Person JSON-LD sameAs arrays. Bing weights Microsoft-ecosystem and high-authority sources heavily:
Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 and has deeply integrated LinkedIn data into Copilot's knowledge base. For person and organization entities especially, LinkedIn is treated as a first-party authoritative source — Copilot will cite or draw from LinkedIn profiles in a way that no other AI engine does for a social platform.
LinkedIn Articles vs. Posts: LinkedIn Articles are indexed by Bing as standalone pages and can rank in Bing search results. Posts are not indexed. Publishing authoritative LinkedIn Articles on your core topics is a direct Bing indexation strategy — and therefore a Copilot citation strategy.
Good news: Bing parses Schema.org JSON-LD using the same spec as Google. All schema you've added for Google AEO works for Copilot too. However, there are Bing-specific enhancements worth adding:
| Factor | Copilot | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search Index | Bing only | Bing + OpenAI crawl | Google only | Own crawl + Bing |
| Entity Source | Bing Entity Store + LinkedIn | Training data + Bing | Google Knowledge Graph | Own index |
| Top Signal | LinkedIn + Bing rank | FAQPage schema + Bing | Google rank + KG | Content freshness |
| Unique Advantage | Microsoft ecosystem integration | Largest user base | Multimodal + GBP | Real-time freshness |
Start with a free AI visibility check, then a Source Map Report shows exactly where your brand appears across Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — and which competitor is occupying the citation slot you should hold.