On 13 October 2026, Microsoft introduced Bing Topics Portfolio, a beta addition to AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools. Instead of showing only individual queries and cited pages, it groups a website’s appearances in AI-generated answers into subjects. It also identifies queries where other sites are cited and yours is not.
That sounds useful for content planning. But AI search citations are not website visits, leads or sales. The report offers evidence about visibility, not business outcomes.
Bing Topics Portfolio: what changed in October 2026?
Microsoft launched the underlying AI Performance public preview on 10 February 2026. It reports how pages are referenced in AI answers across supported Microsoft experiences, including Copilot and AI-generated summaries in Bing. Website owners could already examine grounding queries and cited pages.
The 13 October update adds a broader view. Bing Topics Portfolio groups those queries into themes, then supplies approximate citation information across the wider ecosystem. An opportunity list identifies queries where other sites appear as sources but your site does not.
The old view helped explain where a website was already cited. The beta adds clues about subjects and questions it may be missing.
How Bing Webmaster Tools organises the data
Site owners can open AI Performance and, if their site has sufficient data, select Topics Portfolio. Microsoft says the report supports one-, two- and three-month windows. Its main table contains a topic label and three ecosystem measures:
- Topic Size: approximate citations across all sites for that theme during the selected period.
- Sites Cited: the approximate number of sites cited for queries within the topic.
- Queries: the approximate number of distinct grounding queries assigned to the topic.
Top Opportunity Queries highlights queries across the portfolio where other sites receive citations and the selected website does not. Microsoft displays citation volumes as ranges, not precise totals.
Selecting a topic opens its detail view. There, Your Grounding Queries shows where the site already appears, while Opportunity Queries lists queries where other sources appear instead. The detail page also displays the topic’s approximate size, the site’s own citations and its query count.
These columns do not identify competing domains or count people searching. PPC Land’s independent analysis notes a crucial measurement issue: a citation count is not search volume. One answer may draw on several sources.
Why AI search citation gaps matter
Consider a software consultancy already cited for WordPress maintenance questions. The beta might reveal related backup questions for which other websites are referenced. That is a reason to inspect existing coverage, not evidence that creating a new page will win a citation.
The report helps with AI visibility research when teams decide which gaps are relevant to their audience. It cannot replace conventional SEO measurement: businesses still need search-performance data, referral analytics and conversions to understand commercial outcomes.
It covers supported Microsoft AI experiences, not every chatbot or Google Search result. Nevelit’s overview of Google Search Console’s multimodal reporting concerns a different part of search measurement.
A practical workflow for small websites
Start with themes you already serve
Open a three-month window if available, and note topics closely connected to your services or editorial expertise. Many citations elsewhere do not automatically make a topic attractive: it may be too broad, competitive or unrelated to your customers.
Filter opportunity queries by intent
Choose questions your organisation can answer accurately. Discard competitor-branded queries unless you have a legitimate reason to discuss that product. Microsoft warns that such queries can appear among the opportunities, even when they are poor fits.
Improve a useful page before creating another
For each relevant question, inspect the corresponding page. Does it answer directly? Are explanations current, specific and supported? Often the sensible response is to update an existing guide or service page.
Google’s people-first guidance favours original value and factual accuracy over pages made chiefly to capture queries. Nevelit has discussed this in its coverage of AI content fact-checking guidance. Bing’s opportunities are research prompts, not an instruction to publish near-identical articles.
Record outcomes separately
Keep a dated note of the topic, query, page changed and reason. Later, review citations alongside visits and enquiries. More citations may be encouraging, but do not prove your content change caused the increase.
Limitations and trade-offs of the beta
Microsoft acknowledges that AI-generated topic classification can be wrong. Sites with little citation activity may see a short portfolio or no tab at all. A missing topic does not prove the site has no presence in that subject.
Topic Size, Sites Cited and Queries are approximate; opportunity volumes are ranges. The report cannot support exact market-share claims or traffic forecasts. Its opportunities may include competitors’ brands, making manual filtering essential.
Small teams also face an opportunity cost: chasing every gap may distract from pages that already attract customers. Use the beta to refine priorities, not replace them.
Critical analysis
The valuable change is the move from reporting a site’s own citations to showing where it sits within a wider topic. That offers a stronger starting point for editorial planning than citation totals alone. PPC Land’s analysis also identifies unanswered questions, including how opportunities are ranked and ecosystem totals calculated.
Still, Bing Topics Portfolio is a planning instrument, not a measure of business impact. It cannot show which content improvements will earn citations or give a complete picture across AI platforms. Its best use may be identifying what genuinely useful information is missing from a website.
The test is whether that leads to better pages and measurable benefits for readers or customers. Until then, citation gaps remain hypotheses, not performance targets.
Sources
- Microsoft Bing – Introducing Topics Portfolio (Beta) in AI Performance, 13 October 2026.
- PPC Land – Bing shows sites the AI search queries where rivals get cited and they don’t, 13 October 2026.
- Search Engine Land – Bing Webmaster Tools AI performance report new Topics Portfolio, 13 October 2026.
- Microsoft Bing – Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview, 10 February 2026.
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