Microsoft has rewritten the Bing Webmaster Guidelines to cover how content appears in both traditional search results and Copilot’s AI-generated answers.
The previous version focused on how Bing indexes and ranks websites. The rewrite extends that to Copilot and grounding API results, treating “grounding results and citations” as additional eligibility outcomes.
New Meta Directive Guidance For AI
Previously, the guidelines covered robots meta tags in general terms. Now Bing spells out how each directive affects AI-generated experiences.
NOARCHIVE prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and grounding results. NOCACHE limits Copilot to using only the URL, title, and snippet. DATA-NOSNIPPET and NOSNIPPET may limit citation quality.
A data-snippet attribute lets you specify what text Bing can display or cite. Bing recommends against using NOCACHE on content intended for Copilot if you want richer citations.
This builds on Bing’s rollout of data-nosnippet support in October, which gave websites section-level control over what appears in search snippets and AI summaries.
GEO In Official Guidelines
The old guidelines made no mention of AI grounding as an optimization category. The new version adds it as a named concept.
The guidelines now mention “Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)” by name, defining it as focused on content eligibility for grounding and reference in AI responses. GEO doesn’t guarantee citations, the guidelines note, just as SEO doesn’t guarantee rankings.
Microsoft used the GEO term in the AI Performance dashboard announcement earlier this month. The updated guidelines place GEO into formal policy alongside that tooling.
AI Content Language Softened
The old section on automatically generated content read:
“Machine-generated content is information that is generated by an automated computer process, application, or other mechanisms without any active intervention of a human. Content like this is considered malicious and usually contains garbage text only created to garnish a higher ranking. This type of content will result in penalties.”
Now it reads:
“Large-scale content generated without oversight, quality control, or editorial review often lacks usefulness, accuracy, and originality, and may be excluded from indexing.”
That moves the line from all machine-generated content to content produced without editorial oversight, aligning with Google’s updated spam policies that target content created “primarily for manipulating search rankings.”
New Grounding Optimization Guidance
The old guidelines told you how to get indexed and ranked. The new version adds a parallel set of recommendations for getting selected as a grounding source in AI answers. None of these sections existed before.
Facts should be stated directly rather than implied, since AI systems need content that can be verified independently. Entity names should be clear and consistent, with no ambiguous references.
Bing recommends focusing each URL on a single topic and placing essential information near the top of the page. Single-topic pages are more likely to be selected for grounding results, according to the guidelines.
Expanded Abuse Definitions
The abuse sections were rewritten to cover AI-specific manipulation alongside traditional spam tactics.
The old keyword stuffing section was titled “Keyword Stuffing OR loading pages with irrelevant keywords.” The new version renames it to “Keyword Stuffing and Artificially Engineered Language” and now covers content designed to trigger citations or AI responses, not just content aimed at traditional rankings.
Prompt injection went from a brief mention at the end of the old guidelines to a full section called “Prompt Injection and AI Manipulation,” covering attempts to interfere with language models used by Bing or Copilot.
What Was Removed
The update dropped several technical sections, including detailed support for sitemap formats, JavaScript rendering guidance, SafeSearch content marking, and the social media schemes abuse section.
Why This Matters
The meta directive guidance gives you specific controls for managing whether and how your content appears in Copilot answers, with clear trade-offs for each option.
Bing also notes that a decline in clicks doesn’t always mean visibility has dropped, since content may now surface as citations or grounding references in Copilot. The guidelines recommend tracking impressions and citation eligibility rather than relying solely on click data.
Looking Ahead
Microsoft didn’t publish a separate announcement about the rewrite. The changes are live on the Bing Webmaster Guidelines page, with the previous version available through the Wayback Machine.
The update follows two weeks after the launch of Bing’s AI Performance dashboard. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode follow the same preview controls used in Search (nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, noindex), but it hasn’t published a Bing-style, directive-by-directive breakdown for how other tags (like noarchive or nocache) affect those AI experiences.
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