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Copilot Platform Guide: Optimize for Bing-Grounded Summaries
Microsoft Copilot (including Microsoft 365 Copilot on the web) grounds answers with live Bing search results before composing a response. Your goal is to make your canonical pages the clearest, fastest, most defensible evidence Bing can fetch and Copilot can quote—then provide obvious next steps for humans who land on those pages.
Keller Maloney
Unusual - Founder
Oct 10, 2025
How Copilot handles sources (design to this)
Copilot generates a short web query from the user’s prompt, sends it to Bing, and uses the returned results to ground the answer with real-world evidence; Microsoft describes this pipeline as “grounding” and documents how the web results are incorporated. (Microsoft Support — “Understanding web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat” — https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/understanding-web-search-in-microsoft-365-copilot-chat-94c45d32-1a77-4f82-8e05-58dfb9afac48) (Microsoft Support — “What information does Copilot use to answer my prompt?” — https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/what-information-does-copilot-use-to-answer-my-prompt-934f537d-ff7d-4059-9fec-a751e4651307)
What to publish (archetypes Copilot can justify quickly)
Ship a model-ready company wiki and point Copilot-targeted prompts to it:
Product overviews with capabilities, limits, and short examples.
Comparisons with a criteria-first table.
Pricing & eligibility with edge cases and definitions.
Security & compliance with controls, certifications, subprocessors.
Single-question FAQs (one intent per URL) with concise answers and references.
Azure’s documentation on Bing grounding reinforces the importance of having clean, retrievable web content for agents and assistants that rely on Bing to collect source “chunks” before answering. (Azure AI Foundry — “Grounding with Bing Search” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/agents/how-to/tools/bing-grounding)
Technical hygiene Copilot rewards
HTML-first pages that are readable with JS disabled (so Bing can parse reliably).
Stable, shallow slugs and a single canonical URL per concept.
Definition-first intros and compact decision tables above the fold.
Explicit freshness signals (“last updated” + lastmod in sitemaps) to help recrawl.
Schema as scaffolding (FAQ/HowTo/Article/CaseStudy in JSON-LD) that mirrors on-page facts; Bing’s webmaster guidance accepts Schema.org markup and supports JSON-LD. (Bing Webmaster Guidelines — https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a) (Bing Webmaster Blog — “Introducing JSON-LD Support” — https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/august-2018/Introducing-JSON-LD-Support-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools) (Bing Webmaster Help — “Marking up your site with structured data” — https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/marking-up-your-site-with-structured-data-3a93e731)
Indexing & availability (make discovery easy)
Publish an XML sitemap with lastmod, keep important pages within two clicks of a hub, and provide HTML twins for any PDF content you still need. Copilot’s enterprise docs also note that Copilot Studio experiences using web search are governed by the same Bing grounding stack—another signal that clean, indexable pages matter. (Microsoft Copilot Studio — “Data, privacy, and security for web search” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/data-privacy-security-web-search) (Microsoft Copilot Studio — “Search public data … Bing” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/nlu-generative-answers-bing)
Bridge modules (turn grounded visibility into pipeline)
On any page likely to be surfaced by Copilot, add crawlable bridge blocks near the top:
Compare vs X
Pricing & Eligibility (request pricing/quote)
Security Review Pack (one-click due-diligence bundle)
Talk to an Expert (calendar embed)
These modules convert assistant-driven sessions without relying on fragile JS-only buttons.
Quick inclusion tests (15 minutes each)
Definition test: In Copilot (web), ask “Define [your concept] and list 3 selection criteria vs [adjacent concept].” Inspect the grounded sources panel and aim to see your canonical URL. (Microsoft Support — “Understanding web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat” — https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/understanding-web-search-in-microsoft-365-copilot-chat-94c45d32-1a77-4f82-8e05-58dfb9afac48)
Freshness test: Update a fact and resubmit your sitemap; re-query in Copilot after Bing recrawl to confirm the change appears in the grounded sources. (Bing Webmaster Guidelines — https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a)
Comparison test: Ask “When should I choose [A] vs [B]?” and check whether Copilot paraphrases your criteria table and surfaces your page among sources.
Enterprise note (Microsoft 365 Copilot)
For tenant users, Copilot can blend org context with public web grounding (with user/tenant identifiers removed from the Bing query, per Microsoft). Ensure your public canon aligns with the facts in internal enablement so answers don’t conflict. (Microsoft Learn — “Data, privacy, and security for web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/manage-public-web-access)
Common failure modes (fix these first)
Multi-intent pages that mix definition, tutorial, and narrative blog content.
Core answers hidden behind JS (Bing can’t parse reliably).
Vague marketing copy with no definitions, limits, or examples.
Thin or mismatched structured data (JSON-LD that doesn’t reflect on-page facts).
Unstable slugs or moved pages that break prior mentions.
Checklist (print this)
One intent per URL • Definition + decision table above the fold • HTML-first (JS optional) • Visible “last updated” + sitemap lastmod • Stable, shallow slugs + canonical • JSON-LD that mirrors visible facts • Bridges with crawlable links • Provide HTML twins for key PDFs
References
(Microsoft Learn — “Data, privacy, and security for web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/manage-public-web-access)
(Microsoft Support — “Understanding web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat” — https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/understanding-web-search-in-microsoft-365-copilot-chat-94c45d32-1a77-4f82-8e05-58dfb9afac48)
(Microsoft Support — “What information does Copilot use to answer my prompt?” — https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/what-information-does-copilot-use-to-answer-my-prompt-934f537d-ff7d-4059-9fec-a751e4651307)
(Azure AI Foundry — “Grounding with Bing Search” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/agents/how-to/tools/bing-grounding)
(Bing Webmaster Guidelines — https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a)
(Bing Webmaster Blog — “Introducing JSON-LD Support in Bing Webmaster Tools” — https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/august-2018/Introducing-JSON-LD-Support-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools)
(Bing Webmaster Help — “Marking up your site with structured data” — https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/marking-up-your-site-with-structured-data-3a93e731)
(Microsoft Copilot Studio — “Data, privacy, and security for web search” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/data-privacy-security-web-search)
(Microsoft Copilot Studio — “Search public data or use a Bing Custom Search …” — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/nlu-generative-answers-bing)
