How to get your brand in Microsoft Copilot's answers

In depth

For most of the 2010s, Bing was a rounding error — Google commanded 92%+ of search share and SEO teams correctly deprioritised Bing. That calculus has reversed. Microsoft has integrated Copilot into Windows, Edge, Office, Outlook and Teams, which means Copilot is the default AI surface for hundreds of millions of enterprise users.

And Copilot runs on Bing. Not a separate custom index — the same Bing ranker and crawl you've been ignoring. Sites with stale or incomplete Bing presence can rank well on Google and still be invisible to Copilot, because the underlying index they're drawing from is different.

The fix starts with Bing Webmaster Tools: submit your sitemap, verify your domain, resolve any indexing errors. From there, the same on-page SEO fundamentals apply — just running against a different ranker. In 2026 this is genuinely the highest-ROI SEO work most B2B brands can do.

In depth

LinkedIn's integration into Copilot is one of the few genuinely unique moats in the AI-engine landscape. Because both platforms are Microsoft properties, Copilot can surface LinkedIn content with more confidence than any other AI engine — including Gemini, which doesn't have comparable structured social data.

In practice, this means three things. First, LinkedIn Articles and Newsletters get cited unusually often in Copilot's answers for B2B queries. Second, the named author's LinkedIn profile frequently shows up as secondary context ('according to [name], a [title] at [company]'). Third, engagement signals on LinkedIn — comments, reactions, shares from credible accounts — appear to influence citation weighting.

The programme that wins here is one you'd run anyway for B2B thought leadership: a named founder or executive publishing long-form LinkedIn content monthly, plus a weekly cadence of substantive posts, plus engagement with the right industry voices. What changes in 2026 is that the same programme now double-serves Copilot visibility — which, for enterprise audiences, is worth more than Google traffic for the same queries.

In depth

Copilot's user base is sharply different from ChatGPT's. Where ChatGPT skews consumer and creative — writers, students, developers, small-business owners — Copilot skews enterprise-employed. The Windows and Microsoft 365 integration means it's the default AI surface for anyone using a work laptop at a medium-to-large company.

That has strong implications for what kind of content gets cited. B2C-flavoured listicles and influencer content do badly in Copilot. Enterprise-grade content — procurement-ready buyer's guides, vendor comparison matrices, security and compliance documentation, total cost of ownership analyses — does well.

The buyer archetype changes too. ChatGPT might be asked 'what's a good CRM for my small business'. Copilot is more often asked 'evaluate CRM vendors for a 500-seat enterprise, include SOC 2 and GDPR considerations'. Same category, completely different content requirements. Brands winning here write for the committee, not the consumer.

In depth

The first lever is technical and often overlooked. Submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools, resolve any crawl errors, and audit your Bing rankings for commercial terms. If your Bing presence is weak, no amount of LinkedIn or content work will produce Copilot citations — you have to be in the index first.

The second lever is LinkedIn-native thought leadership. Founder-led posts, VP-authored Articles, weekly newsletters — all specifically on topics adjacent to your commercial category. Copilot treats LinkedIn as privileged content, but it rewards substance. Five paragraphs of lived-experience insight beat fifty posts of motivational content.

The third lever is enterprise content format. Decision-committee content — buyer's guides with vendor matrices, procurement checklists, ROI calculators, compliance deep-dives — ranks and converts in Copilot disproportionately well. This is also content that tends to stay relevant for years, so the compounding is unusually strong.

In depth

The honest answer depends on audience. If you're a pure B2C consumer brand — fashion, hospitality, entertainment — Copilot is a nice-to-have. ChatGPT is where your audience is asking questions, and Gemini through Google is where your transactional traffic still comes from.

But if you sell to enterprise, mid-market B2B, or any buyer who uses a work laptop to research vendors, Copilot is significantly under-optimised by most competitors. The Bing ranker has been ignored for years, LinkedIn thought leadership is a relatively quiet channel compared to Instagram or TikTok, and enterprise-grade content is under-supplied for most categories. The competitive gap is real.

The other thing that tilts the math: AI citation in enterprise contexts is worth proportionally more than AI citation in consumer contexts. A CRM brand cited in Copilot for 'best enterprise CRM' has influenced a buyer evaluating a five- or six-figure contract. A B2C brand cited in ChatGPT for 'best trainers' has influenced a £60 purchase. Even at lower query volume, Copilot citations can return more revenue per mention.

In depth

The Bing indexing work is the fastest win. Most brands have basic technical issues — incomplete sitemap, unverified domain, slow crawl — that take days to fix and show results within a month. If your site suddenly appears for branded queries in Bing where it didn't before, your Copilot visibility follows within weeks.

The LinkedIn layer takes longer because Copilot needs to see a pattern. A single LinkedIn Article won't shift answers. But a named executive publishing substantive posts every 2–3 weeks across 2–3 months builds a recognisable author signal that Copilot starts weighting. This is the lever that most often delivers the 'why is my competitor cited and we're not' win.

Enterprise content is the slowest but most durable. A well-built buyer's guide, comparison matrix or compliance deep-dive can earn Copilot citations for years. The initial lift takes a quarter; the compounding returns are measured in years.