Bing Webmaster Tools now groups the AI search queries that cite your site into topics and shows how big and how crowded each topic is. Use it to plan coverage this quarter, and keep every number from it out of a target until Microsoft narrows the ranges.
What Bing shipped
On October 13, Microsoft Bing announced Topics Portfolio, a beta tab in the AI Performance report. According to the post, it groups the grounding queries where a site appears into thematic clusters, with three measures beside each topic: Topic Size, Sites Cited and Queries. Below the table, a Top Opportunity Queries list shows queries where other sites appear and yours does not.
I like the idea. A publisher with a few hundred pages cannot read grounding queries one at a time, and a view of which themes already pull citations, and which crowded themes we are absent from, answers a question editors ask every week.
The post tells you how far to trust it
Microsoft is direct about the limits. The post’s authors, Krishna Madhavan, Saral Nigam and Vivek Jain of Microsoft Bing, say the view is built on AI-generated classification and ecosystem aggregates, and they give this instruction: “Treat the numbers as directional signals for planning, not as a precise ledger.” Their list of caveats adds that topic classification can occasionally be imperfect, that Topic Size, Sites Cited and Queries are approximate, that opportunity citation volumes are shown as ranges, and that branded queries can appear as opportunities. Smaller sites may see a shorter list or no feature at all.
I take that instruction literally, and my position follows from it. Nobody should write a Topics Portfolio figure into a quarterly goal. A target such as growing citations in our CDP topic by 30% needs a baseline that holds still, and this view offers an approximate size, a classification a machine chose, and a range where the exact number would go. A team that sets the goal will spend the quarter arguing about whether movement came from its work or from a reclassification.
The strongest objection
The best counter-argument is that some data on AI search visibility beats none. Publishers have had almost no view of how often AI answers cite them, and Bing is giving one. Refusing to quantify anything, the objection goes, leaves editors guessing.
I agree with the first half. Use the report. Where I disagree is on the job it is fit for. A directional signal can rank ideas, and it cannot grade performance. The report can tell an editor that one topic has many citations and few sites competing for them, which is a reason to commission a piece. It cannot tell a CMO whether last month’s coverage worked, because the same number may have moved for reasons that have nothing to do with the coverage.
How I would use it
Start with the topics where citations are already concentrated, the starting point Bing itself suggests, and treat the opportunity queries as a brainstorming list that an editor reviews by hand. Strike out the branded ones, since Microsoft says they can show up. Mark down any topic that does not describe your content, using the thumbs controls the post says feed back into the classification.
Keep a separate record of what you published against each topic and when, so that a later change in the report can be compared with something you did. That record is the baseline the tool does not provide, and a spreadsheet is enough to hold it.
This is the same discipline I argued for with analytics vendors in Ask Marketing Analytics Vendors for Lead Time Before Explanations, and it echoes a theme from our measurement coverage in Measurement Disputes Are Moving From the Number to the Definition: when a platform defines the metric, ask for the definition before you ask for the target.
One practical step for this week: pick the three topics where your site already has the most citations, list the queries Bing shows under each, and ask the editor who owns that beat which ones deserve a new piece. Re-run the same view in a month with the publishing record beside it, and judge the tool by whether its suggestions held up against what editors already knew.
Source: Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing Topics Portfolio (Beta) in AI Performance
