Microsoft has rewrote the Bing Webmaster Guidelines to cover how content appears in both traditional search results and the AI responses generated by Copilot.
The previous version focused on how Bing indexes and ranks websites. The recast extends this to Copilot and Grounding API results and treats “Grounding results and citations” as additional authorization results.
New meta policy guidance for AI
Previously, the guidelines covered robots meta tags generally. Now Bing explains how each policy impacts AI-generated experiences.
NOARCHIVE prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and justification results. NOCACHE limits Copilot to using only the URL, title and snippet. DATA-NOSNIPPET and NOSNIPPET can affect citation quality.
You can use a data snippet attribute to specify what text Bing can display or quote. Bing recommends against using NOCACHE on content intended for Copilot if you want more detailed citations.
This builds on Bing’s introduction of data nosnippet support in October, which gave sites section-level control over what appears in search snippets and AI summaries.
GEO In official guidelines
The old guidelines did not mention 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, with a focus on the suitability of content for anchoring and referencing in AI responses. GEO does not guarantee citations, the guidelines say, just as SEO does not guarantee rankings.
Microsoft used the GEO term in its AI Performance Dashboard announcement earlier this month. The updated guidelines integrate GEO into the formal policy alongside these tools.
AI content language toned down
The old auto-generated content section read:
“Machine-generated content is information that is generated by an automated computer process, application, or other mechanism without active human intervention. Content such as this is considered malicious and usually contains garbage text created solely to achieve higher rankings. This type of content is subject to penalties.”
Now it says:
“Large content created without oversight, quality control or editorial review often lacks usefulness, accuracy and originality and may be excluded from indexing.”
This shifts the line from all machine-generated content to content created without editorial oversight, and is in line with Google’s updated spam guidelines, which target content created “primarily to manipulate search rankings.”
New instructions for grounding optimization
The old guidelines described how to get indexed and ranked. The new version adds a set of parallel recommendations for selection as an informed source of AI answers. None of these sections existed before.
Facts should be stated directly and not implied, as AI systems require content that can be independently verified. Entity names should be clear and consistent and not contain ambiguous references.
Bing recommends focusing each URL on a single topic and placing important information at the top of the page. According to the guidelines, single topic pages are more likely to be selected for informed results.
Expanded definitions of abuse
The abuse sections have been rewritten to cover AI-specific manipulations in addition to traditional spam tactics.
The old section on keyword stuffing was titled “Keyword Stuffing OR Loading Pages with Irrelevant Keywords”. The new version renames it “Keyword Stuffing and Artificially Engineered Language” and now covers content intended to trigger citations or AI responses, rather than just content aimed at traditional rankings.
Prompt Injection went from a brief mention at the end of the old guidelines to a full section titled “Prompt Injection and AI Manipulation,” which covers attempts to interfere with the language models used by Bing or Copilot.
What was removed
The update removed several technical sections, including detailed support for sitemap formats, JavaScript rendering instructions, SafeSearch content tagging, and the section on misuse of social media systems.
Why this is important
The Meta Instruction Guide gives you specific controls for managing whether and how your content appears in Copilot responses, with clear trade-offs for each option.
Bing also notes that a drop in clicks doesn’t always mean a drop in visibility, as content may now show up as quotes or citations in Copilot. The guidelines recommend tracking impressions and citation permissions rather than relying solely on click data.
Looking ahead
Microsoft has not released a separate announcement about the recast. The changes are live on the Bing Webmaster Guidelines page, with the previous version available via the Wayback Machine.
The update comes two weeks after the launch of Bing’s AI Performance dashboard. Google says that AI Summary and AI Mode follow the same preview controls used in search (nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, noindex), but it hasn’t released a Bing-style directive breakdown showing how other tags (like noarchive or nocache) impact these AI experiences.
Featured Image: Bangla Press/Shutterstock
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