AI assistant · Microsoft

Microsoft Copilot

Bing's index, built by Bingbot.

Compiled by Kuldeep Paul · Updated Oct 29, 2026

Operator: Microsoft
Launched: Feb 7, 2023
Search index: Bing's index, built by Bingbot.Sources: searchengines.net, learn.microsoft.com
Crawlers: Bingbot — blocked by 2.8% of top sites
Referrer in analytics: copilot.microsoft.combing.comcopilot.cloud.microsoft
UTM tagging: None added
Ads: Yes. Microsoft Advertising serves ads in Copilot.
Citations: Numbered citations with link cards.
Official docs: bing.com

What this means for visibility

There is no AI-only Microsoft token. Copilot visibility follows Bingbot access, and Bing honours nocache/noarchive meta for AI use.

Usage, as stated

As of	Metric	Value	Stated by	Source
Jan 2026	Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats	15 million	Microsoft earnings call	computerworld.com

Questions

What search engine does Microsoft Copilot use?

Bing's index, built by Bingbot.

Which crawlers does Microsoft Copilot use?

Microsoft Copilot relies on Bingbot. There is no AI-only Microsoft token. Copilot visibility follows Bingbot access, and Bing honours nocache/noarchive meta for AI use.

How do I track Microsoft Copilot traffic in analytics?

Clicks from Microsoft Copilot arrive with the referrer copilot.microsoft.com or bing.com or copilot.cloud.microsoft. Add it to an AI channel in GA4 using a source regex.

Does Microsoft Copilot show ads?

Yes. Microsoft Advertising serves ads in Copilot.

Analysis using this data

The opt-out asymmetry: you can block the small AI engines, not the big oneThe AI surfaces with the most users are the ones publishers can't refuse and can't measure.

Other AI engines

ChatGPT · ChatGPT Atlas · Google AI Overviews · Google AI Mode · Gemini · Perplexity · Comet · Claude · Meta AI · Grok · DeepSeek · Le Chat · You.com · Brave Search (Ask Brave) · Kagi Assistant · DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) · Amazon Rufus (retired)

How to cite this data

This dataset is free to use, including commercially, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The one rule is attribution:

Credit the source as “Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc” wherever you use a figure, chart or table from it.
Link to this page (https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot), not to the download file, so readers can check the source of every number.
Include the date. These figures change; say “as of Oct 29, 2026” or link to the version you used.
Mark changes. If you filter, recalculate or chart the data yourself, say so (“analysis based on data from…”).
Cite the original source for single figures when you quote one reported number; it is linked in every row.

In running text: according to Kuldeep Paul's Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.

APA

Paul, K. (2026). Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot

MLA

Paul, Kuldeep. "Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot.

Chicago

Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot.

BibTeX

@misc{paul2026copilot, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }

HTML link

<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/copilot">Microsoft Copilot — AI search engine reference</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)