Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Copilot)

"Bing Copilot" is not an official product name. Microsoft launched the feature as Bing Chat in February 2023 and renamed it Microsoft Copilot in November 2023, moving it out from under the Bing brand and onto its own domain. Many people still call it Bing Copilot, and that is what this entry is filed under, but the current names are Microsoft Copilot for the assistant and Copilot Search in Bing for the answer engine built into Bing's results.

When a user submits a query, Copilot produces a Response that summarizes information from the web in natural language. These Responses often include Inline Sources that link directly to websites and Cited Sources that show attribution, making it both an answer engine and a discovery tool.

Copilot is no longer powered by OpenAI alone. Microsoft has broadened the model mix to include Anthropic's Claude models alongside OpenAI's, and its own in-house MAI family for parts of the experience. Which model answers a given query is not something site owners can see or influence; what matters for visibility is whether your pages are in the index Copilot draws on, which is Bing's.

The name "Copilot" comes from Microsoft's broader strategy of embedding AI copilots across its products, from Office to GitHub. In search, Copilot acts as an assistant that not only retrieves information but interprets it, allowing users to ask conversational questions instead of relying solely on keyword-based search.

For marketers, Copilot matters because it changes how users discover brands on Microsoft's search platform. Instead of scanning lists of links, users see synthesized Responses where brand Presence, Placement, and Position directly affect Brand Visibility and Share of Voice. Because Copilot Search runs on the Bing index, being crawlable by Bingbot is the precondition for appearing there at all.