Google vs Bing AI Search Visibility Guidance 2026

For marketers and SEO professionals, the shift towards AI search is no longer restricted to ranking position alone. AI search is rapidly expanding with AI referrals to top websites increasing 357% year over year in June 2025, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft published their AI search optimisation guide back in October 2025. Google recently published their AI guide 7 months later in May 2026.

Both trillion dollar companies with different playbooks on AI search visibility, with some similarities and differences that openly contradict each other.

Traditional SEO fundamentals still apply for both at the base level – Crawlability, metadata, internal linking and backlinks remain essential for ensuring your content is discoverable. But now, content is no longer solely appearing in a list of ranked links.

For clarity, throughout this article I will refer to Microsoft and Bing interchangeably.

Google’s stance on AI visibility applies mainly to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

• Don’t chunk content. 
• Schema isn’t required. 
• Don’t rewrite for AI. 
• No llms.txt
• No special markup
• Add high-quality images and video: google generative AI can bring in relevant images and video beyond just page links
• Provide a unique point of view rather than generic AI content
• No fake “mentions”

AI Overviews still occupy a single position in the Performance report. In contrast to Bing Webmaster tools, it doesn’t provide citation counts or a dedicated AI Mode report.

Google’s AI visibility guidance is simply asking you to trust them.

Bing’s index powers Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT where the following guidance applies:

• Avoid long walls of text
• Don’t hide important answers in tabs or accordions
• Don’t rely on PDFs 
• Don’t embed key text only on images – provide alt text
• Chunk content 
• Add schema
• Use Q&A formats
• Anchor claims in measurable facts

• Keep answers concise: One- to two-sentence responses that directly address a question.
• Use structured formatting: Lists, tables, and Q&A blocks 
• Use clear headings: For AI, Clear headings (<h2>, <h3>) behave like chapter titles defining where one concept begins and ends (content slices).  
• Use self-contained phrasing

• Avoid decorative arrows
• Avoid long strings of punctuation
• Be cautious with em dashes – a full stop or semicolon is usually clearer.
• Use bullets or numbers for lists where it makes sense

Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools back in February. Revealing real publisher data on total citations, cited pages, grounding queries and visibility trends over time, providing insights on how Copilot is actually using your content.

1. Keep doing SEO

Both Google and Microsoft Bing advise following SEO fundamental and crawling best practices.

2. Use Structured HTML

Google: Use semantic HTML when possible and write with clear precise language, context, and punctuation. Organise content by paragraphs and sections, along with headings that provide a clear structure to navigate content. Focus on what your users want, and avoid overdoing it.

Microsoft: Ensure heading tags, sections, page titles and descriptions are consistently aligned to improve discoverability and confidence signals for AI systems.

3. Focus on your human audience over web crawlers

Google: Create well written content for your human audience that’s easy to follow, helpful, reliable and people-first.

Microsoft: Write for your audience and their intent, not just keywords. Use phrasing that directly answers the questions users ask.

4. Don’t rewrite content just for AI systems

You don’t need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search. 

Google: Don’t try to create separate content for every possible variation of how people might search. AI systems can understand synonyms and general meanings of what someone is seeking, in order to connect them with content that might not use the same precise words. 

Microsoft: Use synonyms and related terms to reinforce meaning and helps the AI system connect concepts.

Primarily, you may be thinking to prioritise optimising for Google AI search to start with, due to its larger search volume. However, Bing AI search (Copilot/ Search GPT) shouldn’t be ignored, as Bing indexes faster and heavily powers external AI platforms (Chat GPT).
Moreover, Bing shows you direct AI performance data (total citations, cited pages, grounding queries) and Google just tells you to take their word for it without showing you tangible data that your optimisation efforts worked.

Ultimately you’ll need to optimise for both, using tailored strategies depending on the surface that matters to you.

The key differences that contradict between the two is Microsoft encourages the use of structured data (schema) and chunking content where Google insists it isn’t necessary for their AI search systems to do so. Microsoft has a greater emphasis towards structuring in Q+A formats and use of self-contained phrasing whereas Google emphasises human-first unique original content that’s easy for users to follow semantically.

Generally speaking, focus your deep, authoritative, long-form content on Google, but use Bing to test how well AI models read your exact-match questions and answers.

To satisfy the AI algorithms of both platforms simultaneously: write highly scannable, conversational content that directly answers a user’s question within the first two sentences.

If you’re looking for further advice or need help navigating the complex search landscape of SEO and GEO, we’re here to help with SEO strategy packages and custom website design informed by data that’s optimised to convert.

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