How to rank in Microsoft Copilot
by Microsoft
Microsoft's AI surface — Bing index plus OpenAI models.
Copilot powers AI answers in Bing, Edge, Windows, and Microsoft 365. It runs on OpenAI's models but ranks pages through Bing's index, so Bing Webmaster Tools matter as much as classical SEO. For B2B and enterprise queries, Copilot is increasingly the default — especially inside Office.
Copilot uses Bing's web index as its primary source, re-ranked for answer-readiness. Pages that perform in Bing tend to perform in Copilot, with a bonus for structured data and FAQ blocks.
Microsoft Copilot crawlers to allow
- bingbot
- OAI-SearchBot (shared with ChatGPT)
Signals Microsoft Copilot rewards
Quick wins for Microsoft Copilot
- Submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools — Copilot inherits from Bing
- Use IndexNow to push fresh URLs to Bing in real time
- Add Article and FAQ schema
- Optimize for B2B and productivity queries — Copilot's strongest surface
Common Microsoft Copilot mistakes
- • Treating Bing as 'set and forget' — Copilot exposes Bing's weaknesses
- • Not using IndexNow — Bing rewards freshness more than Google does
See if Microsoft Copilot cites your site
Run a free OptimAIze scan to audit Microsoft Copilot readiness — schema, crawlers, llms.txt, quotable content — in 90 seconds.
Run free scanFrequently asked questions
How do I know if Microsoft Copilot is citing my site?
Run the AI Citation Tracker inside OptimAIze. It queries Microsoft Copilot for your target prompts and stores the cited sources weekly, so you can see whether your domain appears and how often. Most teams discover they're cited far less than they expected — and that the lift after a GEO pass is measurable within 4–6 weeks.
Does ranking in Microsoft Copilot hurt my Google rankings?
No. Microsoft Copilot's crawler is separate from Googlebot. Allowing it in robots.txt has zero effect on Google's index, and the on-page optimizations that Microsoft Copilot rewards (schema, quotable paragraphs, clean HTML) are the same ones that help classical SEO. Treat the two as one program.
How long until changes show up in Microsoft Copilot answers?
Most pages re-ingest within 2–6 weeks. Pages with strong internal linking and existing organic traffic update fastest. Brand-new pages can take a full quarter before they start appearing in Microsoft Copilot citations.