This one’s short because the answer is short, and because it’s the single most common thing I find wrong when I check a client’s AI visibility. They’ve spent years on Google. They’ve never once thought about Bing. And the tool their buyers are increasingly asking doesn’t read Google.
Bing. OpenAI’s search partnership is with Microsoft, so when ChatGPT needs current information, the web results it grounds its answer in come from Bing’s index. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode use Google’s index, Copilot uses Bing, and Perplexity runs its own crawler with a mix of sources. But the one most of your buyers are using is ChatGPT, and ChatGPT reads Bing.
That matters more than it sounds, because Bing’s index is not a copy of Google’s. It’s smaller and it’s built differently. A site that ranks fine on Google can be thin or missing on Bing, and if it’s missing on Bing, it’s invisible to ChatGPT no matter how good it is.
Because nobody told them to be. Google Search Console is the thing every web developer sets up. Bing Webmaster Tools is the thing almost nobody does, since for fifteen years Bing was a rounding error. The result is a huge number of good local businesses that Bing has either never crawled or crawled once and forgotten.
I’ve checked this for clients in finance, hospitality, construction, and software, in Charlotte and well outside it. More than half had never been added. A couple were ranking first on Google for their category and didn’t exist to ChatGPT.
1. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in with a Microsoft account. A free Outlook address works.
2. Choose “Import from Google Search Console.” It reuses your existing Google verification and pulls your site and sitemap across in one click. No code, no DNS changes.
3. Confirm your sitemap is listed under Sitemaps. If it isn’t, paste in the URL, usually yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml or /sitemap.xml.
4. Give it a day or two, then open the AI Performance report in the left menu. That’s Microsoft’s dashboard showing which of your pages Copilot and Bing’s AI answers are actually citing, and for which questions.
That last step is the part worth knowing about. Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report shows which URLs are cited, which queries trigger those citations, and how citation activity changes over time. Google doesn’t offer anything like it yet. So the same ten minutes that gets you into ChatGPT’s index also gets you the only free first-party view of how AI is using your site.
Being in the index gets you eligible, not recommended. ChatGPT names one to three businesses in a typical answer, and it picks them based on the same things that decide everything else: whether your site answers the question plainly, whether your Google and Bing listings and your reviews agree with each other, and whether the web has enough consistent mentions of you to trust the name. That’s the brand work, and it’s a longer conversation.
But you can’t get recommended if you can’t be found, and this is the ten minutes that fixes found.
Not sure if ChatGPT can see you? Send me your website and I’ll check the ten questions your buyers ask, tell you where you show up and where you don’t, and what I’d fix first. Takes me a day, no charge, and it’s me doing it, not a bot.
GiddyBrands is a senior-led branding studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, working with founder-led businesses across the US and abroad. No account manager layer, the person you talk to builds the work. The portfolio shows what that looks like in practice.
Bing. ChatGPT’s web search is powered by Microsoft’s index through OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft. If your site isn’t indexed by Bing, ChatGPT can’t cite it.
Yes. They’re separate indexes. Search Console tells Google about your site. Bing Webmaster Tools tells Bing, and through Bing, ChatGPT and Copilot. The good news is you can import your Search Console setup into Bing in one click.
Bing usually crawls within a few days of a sitemap submission. ChatGPT reflects Bing’s index, so once you’re indexed there, you’re eligible to be cited. Being recommended over competitors takes longer and depends on how clearly your site and your listings answer the questions people ask.
Sources: Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, “Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools,” February 2026, and “New AI Visibility Insights,” June 2026. OpenAI and Microsoft partnership documentation.
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