Right now one of the biggest questions in digital marketing isn’t just where your website ranks in Google. It’s whether your business is appearing in AI-generated answers from platforms such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
As more users turn to AI-powered tools to research products, services and suppliers, businesses are beginning to ask a new question:
“How do we know if AI is using our content?”
Until recently, there was very little visibility into this process. While you could sometimes see referral traffic arriving from AI platforms, understanding whether your website was actually being cited or influencing the answers users received was far more difficult.
That’s starting to change.
Microsoft has introduced new AI Visibility features within Clarity that provide businesses with a much clearer picture of how their content is being discovered, crawled and cited by AI-powered search experiences.
As with everything in the AI space, the features and reporting available today are likely to evolve over time. However, as of today, they offer some of the most useful insights we’ve seen for understanding how websites are appearing in AI-generated answers.
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Microsoft Clarity is a free website analytics and user behaviour platform from Microsoft.
Many businesses already use Clarity for:
- Session recordings
- Heatmaps
- User journey analysis
- Conversion optimisation
- User experience insights
Unlike traditional analytics platforms that focus primarily on traffic and conversions, Clarity helps businesses understand how visitors actually interact with their website.
Now Microsoft has expanded Clarity’s capabilities to include AI Visibility reporting, helping businesses understand how AI platforms are discovering, citing and referring users to their websites.
When Did These New AI Features Launch?
Microsoft has rolled out the AI Visibility platform in stages. The AI Bot Activity functionality started appearing during early 2026, while the new Citations dashboard became generally available in May 2026.
This means businesses can now begin measuring something that previously felt almost impossible:
How often AI systems are using their content when generating answers.
As with all AI technologies, these features are evolving rapidly, so we expect additional functionality and reporting to be introduced over time.
What is the New AI Visibility Dashboard?
The AI Visibility section within Microsoft Clarity is designed to help businesses understand how AI systems interact with their website.
It currently focuses on two key areas:
1. AI Citations
This shows when your website’s content is being used as a source for AI-generated answers.
Think of it as the AI equivalent of earning a ranking in Google.
Rather than simply appearing in search results, your content is being selected as a trusted source to help generate an answer.
The dashboard can provide insights into:
- Which pages are being cited
- Which topics trigger citations
- Which queries are associated with your content
- How your visibility compares against competitors
- Traffic arriving from AI-generated answers
This gives marketers and business owners a much clearer picture of how AI platforms are discovering and using their content.
2. AI Bot Activity
Before an AI platform can cite your content, it first needs to discover and understand it.
The Bot Activity dashboard helps track this process.
It can provide visibility into:
- Which AI crawlers are visiting your website
- The volume of AI bot activity
- Which pages are being accessed
- Crawl coverage across your website
- Potential bot or crawling issues
This creates a useful view of what happens before citations occur.
In simple terms:
Bot activity helps explain how AI systems are learning about your website, while citations show when that learning turns into visibility inside AI-generated answers.
Where Does the Data Come From?
One of the first questions many marketers ask when looking at the new AI Visibility reports is:
“Where is this data actually coming from?”
As of today, Microsoft is combining data from several sources to provide these insights.
For AI Citations
The Citations reporting is understood to be powered through a combination of Microsoft Clarity, Bing Webmaster Tools and Microsoft’s search infrastructure.
Because Microsoft powers Bing Search and Microsoft Copilot, it has visibility into when websites are being used as sources to help generate AI-powered answers. The platform can then surface information about:
- Which pages are being cited
- Which topics are generating citations
- Traffic arriving from AI-generated answers
- How your visibility compares against competitors
This gives businesses a much clearer view of how their content is being used within AI search experiences.
For AI Bot Activity
The Bot Activity reporting works slightly differently.
Many AI crawlers don’t behave like traditional website visitors and often don’t execute JavaScript in the same way a human browser would. This means standard analytics platforms cannot always see the full picture.
To address this, Microsoft can utilise server-side data integrations through content delivery networks (CDNs) and infrastructure providers, helping identify activity from AI crawlers such as those associated with OpenAI, Anthropic and other large language model providers.
This allows businesses to better understand how AI systems are discovering, accessing and processing their content before citations ever occur.
As with all AI-related reporting, Microsoft continues to develop these features, so the exact data sources and reporting capabilities may evolve over time.
Why Is This Important for Businesses?
AI search is creating a new layer of online visibility.
Historically, businesses focused on:
- Search rankings
- Organic traffic
- Paid advertising
- Social media visibility
Today, there is another question becoming increasingly important:
“Does AI recommend our business?”
The challenge is that many AI-generated answers happen before a user ever visits a website.
A prospect might ask:
- “Who are the best construction companies in Sheffield?”
- “What’s the best CRM for manufacturers?”
- “Which digital marketing agencies specialise in SEO?”
The AI may provide an answer that references several websites, brands or sources.
If your business is not part of that conversation, you may be missing opportunities before traditional website traffic is even generated.
What Can Businesses Do to Improve AI Visibility?
Although AI search is evolving rapidly, many of the fundamentals remain familiar.
Businesses should focus on:
Creating genuinely useful content
AI systems are designed to surface content that helps answer questions clearly and accurately.
Demonstrating expertise
Authoritative content, case studies, industry knowledge and real-world experience continue to matter.
Building trust signals
Reviews, citations, brand mentions and strong online authority all help reinforce credibility.
Structuring content clearly
FAQs, clear headings, concise answers and logical content structures make information easier for AI systems to understand.
Maintaining technical SEO foundations
Strong indexing, crawlability, page speed and website health remain essential.
The businesses that perform well in AI search are often the same businesses that have invested consistently in quality SEO and content marketing.
How Can Dream Agility Help?
At Dream Agility, we’re already helping clients understand how AI is changing search behaviour and online visibility. We can help you understand where your business currently stands and where opportunities may exist.
The reality is that many businesses are still trying to work out exactly how AI search fits into their digital marketing strategy.
That’s perfectly normal.
As of today, the landscape is changing incredibly quickly, and new tools are launching continuously.
The important thing is having the right data available so you can make informed decisions.
Don’t Have Microsoft Clarity Yet?
If you’re not currently using Microsoft Clarity and would like to understand more about what it can offer, you can book a no-obligation call with us today. Clarity is free too so you’d be foolish not to.
As Microsoft continues to develop AI Visibility reporting, having Clarity installed today could help you build a valuable historical data set for the future.
Final Thoughts
AI search is no longer something businesses can ignore.
As of today, platforms such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are influencing how people discover information, evaluate suppliers and make purchasing decisions.
Microsoft Clarity’s new AI Visibility features provide one of the first genuinely useful ways for businesses to understand how their content is appearing within these AI-driven experiences.
While the technology will undoubtedly continue to evolve, the businesses that start measuring and learning now will be in a far stronger position as AI search becomes an increasingly important part of the customer journey.
If you’d like help understanding your current AI visibility or improving your strategy.
Contact us here at Dream Agility today and let’s explore the opportunities together.