How to Track Your Brand in Microsoft Copilot (2026)

While everyone watches ChatGPT, millions of office workers ask the assistant built into their taskbar. Microsoft Copilot ships inside Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365 — and it's the AI engine your visibility tools most likely ignore. This guide covers how Copilot picks its answers, how to check your brand there by hand, and how to put it on a weekly schedule.

Copilot runs on Bing, not Google

When Copilot needs current facts — "best [your category] software," "[Competitor] pricing" — it grounds the answer in a Bing web search and links its sources as footnotes. Everything you know about your Google visibility tells you nothing here. Copilot reads Bing's index, ranked by Bing's signals.

That matters because of who uses it. Copilot is the default assistant in Windows, the sidebar in Edge, and the AI layer across Word, Excel, and Teams. If you sell B2B, a meaningful share of your buyers work inside a Microsoft stack all day — and when they ask for tool recommendations, they ask Copilot, not the engine your dashboard watches.

Checking whether Copilot names your brand is part of answer engine optimization — the practice of earning recommendations inside AI answers (also called GEO, for Generative Engine Optimization — a marketing term, nothing to do with geolocation).

The engine most tools skip

Copilot is the blind spot of the AI-visibility category. HubSpot's AEO tool, at $50/mo, tracks three engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — and does not track Copilot, Claude, or Google AI Overviews as of July 2026. We compared it in detail here. Other trackers gate extra engines behind add-on fees or enterprise tiers.

So a brand can run a tracking tool, see healthy ChatGPT numbers, and have no idea Copilot recommends a competitor to every Microsoft-shop buyer in its market. Engines don't agree with each other — a shortlist on one is no guarantee of a shortlist on another — which is exactly why per-engine columns beat a single blended score.

First: check that Bing can see you

Before testing prompts, confirm the prerequisite. Copilot cites pages from Bing's index — if Bing hasn't indexed a page, Copilot can't cite it, no matter how well it does on Google.

Two checks, ten minutes:

1. Search site:yourdomain.com on Bing. Are your key pages — homepage, pricing, comparison posts — in the results? Bing's index is not a copy of Google's; sites strong on one can be thin on the other.
2. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. It's free, it imports your site straight from Google Search Console, and it shows you indexing gaps. Most teams verified GSC years ago and never did this.

If pages are missing, submit them there first. Everything else in this guide builds on being indexed.

How to check your brand in Copilot by hand

1. Write 10–20 buyer prompts. Open questions that produce a shortlist: "best [category] tool for a mid-size team," "[Competitor A] vs [Competitor B]," "[category leader] alternatives." Skip your own brand name — buyers who don't know you yet won't type it.

2. Ask at copilot.microsoft.com in a fresh conversation. Prefer signed-out checks, or a test account. A signed-in session carries history, and a Microsoft 365 work account can color answers further. You want what a stranger sees.

3. Record three things per answer. Was your brand named? Is your site in the footnote citations? Which competitor got named first? Copilot's cited links tell you which pages framed the answer — note them, because those pages are your real competition.

4. Re-run each prompt across several days. Copilot's answers vary between runs like every generative engine. Three to five runs per prompt turns an anecdote into a mention rate.

5. Log it all in one sheet. Prompt, date, named yes/no, cited URL, competitors named. Boring, and it works.

Quirks that skew your results

• The Bing index gap. The most common finding in a first Copilot audit: pages that rank on Google but were never indexed by Bing, so Copilot can't cite them. Fix indexing before judging your content.
• Different sources than Google-grounded engines. Bing ranks review sites, directories, and listicles differently than Google. The third-party pages that carry your brand into Gemini answers may not be the ones Bing surfaces.
• Signed-in personalization. Work accounts and chat history shift answers. Keep measurement sessions clean and consistent.
• Run-to-run variance. One check proves nothing in either direction. Rates over repeated runs are the only honest number.

Automating the checks with Geotally

Manual Copilot checks are worth doing once — the Bing index audit alone usually pays for the afternoon. But 15 prompts, four runs each, footnotes logged, every week, on top of five other engines? That's where the spreadsheet dies.

Geotally tracks all six engines on every plan: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. You add your buyer prompts once; it runs them on a schedule and reports mentions, citations, and share of voice per engine and per country, with a weekly digest of what moved. The per-engine breakdown is the point — you'll see cases where ChatGPT names you and Copilot doesn't, and each engine gap gets its own fix instead of hiding inside an average. The pricing page shows what each tier covers.

Find out what Copilot tells Microsoft-shop buyers

Run the Bing site: check, then ask Copilot ten buyer questions and count who gets named. If your category sells to businesses, this is the audit your competitors probably haven't run — the tools most of them use can't see Copilot at all.

To keep it running weekly, start a 7-day free trial of Geotally on Starter ($19/mo) or Growth. Card at checkout, nothing charged until day 7 — two weekly reports before you pay anything.

Working through the engines one by one? The Perplexity guide is next: how to track your brand mentions in Perplexity. For the full method, see how to track your brand across AI engines.

FAQ

Does Microsoft Copilot use Bing or Google?

Bing. Copilot grounds its web answers in Bing searches and cites Bing-indexed pages as footnotes. Your Google rankings have no direct effect on Copilot answers — check your Bing indexing instead.

How do I get my brand mentioned in Copilot?

Start with Bing: index your key pages via Bing Webmaster Tools. Then publish content that answers buyer questions directly — comparisons, "best X" pages — and earn presence on the review sites Bing already ranks.

Does my Bing ranking affect Copilot answers?

Yes, at the retrieval step — Copilot builds answers from pages Bing surfaces. But retrieval isn't recommendation: the answer names a few brands, and shortlist-style pages tend to decide which ones.

Which tools track Copilot brand mentions?

Fewer than you'd expect. HubSpot's AEO tool doesn't track Copilot as of July 2026, and several trackers sell extra engines as add-ons. Geotally includes Copilot on every plan, alongside the other five major engines.

Is Copilot the same as Bing Chat?

It's the successor. Microsoft rebranded Bing Chat as Copilot in late 2023 and spread it across Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365. The grounding model is the same: answers built from Bing search results.

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See whether Copilot recommends you or a competitor. Start a 7-day free trial of Geotally — plans from $19/mo, no charge until day 7.

Geotally team · July 2026