{"id":8573,"date":"2026-05-21T17:02:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=8573"},"modified":"2026-05-21T17:02:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:02:38","slug":"microsoft-clarity-now-shows-grounding-queries-behind-ai-citations-via-sejournal-taylordanrw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=8573","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p> <div id=\"narrow-cont\"> <p>When Microsoft Clarity made AI citations available to all users, it opened up a new playground for SEOs to harvest AI visibility data. Finally, we can see the exact \u201cgrounding queries\u201d an AI engine uses to pull our content.<\/p> <p>It raises a massive question because this is a Microsoft tool: Are the insights useless if your audience doesn\u2019t touch the Bing ecosystem?<\/p> <h2>Microsoft Clarity Grounding Queries<\/h2> <p>When you ask Copilot a question, it translates your words into simple search terms called grounding queries to find facts on the web before it answers. You can use this data to improve your own website and content.<\/p> <ul> <li>Finding gaps where your content does not match what the AI searches for.<\/li> <li>Simplifying pages that the AI reads but does not link to.<\/li> <li>Using these simple layouts to help your Google search results.<\/li> <\/ul> <p><iframe class=\"sej-iframe-auto-height\" id=\"in-content-iframe\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-json\/sscats\/v2\/tk\/Middle_Post_Text\"><\/iframe><\/p> <h2>Copilot Vs. Gemini<\/h2> <p>Both Copilot and Gemini use retrieval-augmented approaches. Instead of generating answers using only pre-trained parameters, they dynamically query external search indexes to retrieve real-time data, which they then use as context to ground their final responses.<\/p> <div class=\"scrl-table\"> <table style=\"border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;\"> <tbody> <tr> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\"><strong>Feature<\/strong><\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\"><strong>Microsoft Copilot<\/strong><\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\"><strong>Google Gemini<\/strong><\/td> <\/tr> <tr> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Structure<\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Uses a query translator, Bing index search, and OpenAI models to write the final text.<\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Uses a query translator, Google Search, and Google\u2019s Gemini models to write the final text.<\/td> <\/tr> <tr> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Pulling Sources<\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Uses the Bing index and Microsoft Graph to scan web pages, emails, and Microsoft 365 files.<em> (With permissions enabled)<\/em><\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Uses Google Search and Google Workspace to scan web pages, Google Drive files, and Gmail.<em> (With permissions enabled)<\/em><\/td> <\/tr> <tr> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Synthesising Answers<\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Focuses on direct answers. It uses structured lists, tables, and bullet points to show facts quickly.<\/td> <td style=\"width: 33.3333%;\">Focuses on creative, conversational answers. It is built to handle text, images, and code at the same time.<\/td> <\/tr> <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div> <h2>Does Ranking In Bing Matter?<\/h2> <p><em>Yes (Correlation).<\/em><\/p> <p>One of my websites was doing extremely well in Copilot, with over 36,000 citations across all queries. Now, Clarity doesn\u2019t give you the prompts\/queries themselves, but it does give you the Grounding queries (grounding queries and key phrases used to retrieve your site\u2019s content).<\/p> <figure id=\"attachment_575280\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 2944px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173.png\"  width=\"2944\" height=\"1266\" class=\"wp-image-575280 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-384x165.png 384w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-425x183.png 425w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-480x206.png 480w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-680x292.png 680w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-768x330.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-850x366.png 850w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1024x440.png 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1280x720.png 1280w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1300x680.png 1300w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1536x661.png 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1600x688.png 1600w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-1920x826.png 1920w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173-2048x881.png 2048w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.14.52-173.png 2944w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2944px) 100vw, 2944px\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW\u63d2\u56fe\" alt=\"Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW\u63d2\u56fe\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image from author, May 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure> <p>My website has a history, running for years with a previous domain merged in 2019, and boasts over 1,000 articles. Given that Google barely sends traffic, and third-party SEO tools often label it as spam due to non-English backlinks (it covers search engines like Baidu, CocCoc, SwissCows, attracting an international audience), I never expected 36,000 citations.<\/p> <p>So, why the Copilot love? I took the 147 grounding queries and tracked their rank in Google and Bing.<\/p> <figure id=\"attachment_575283\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 1540px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314.png\"  width=\"1540\" height=\"684\" class=\"wp-image-575283 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-384x171.png 384w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-425x189.png 425w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-480x213.png 480w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-680x302.png 680w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-768x341.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-850x378.png 850w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-1024x455.png 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-1280x684.png 1280w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-1300x680.png 1300w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314-1536x682.png 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/screenshot-2026-05-19-at-12.41.08-314.png 1540w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1540px) 100vw, 1540px\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW\u63d2\u56fe1\" alt=\"Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW\u63d2\u56fe1\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image from author, May 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure> <p>Of the 147 queries, Bing ranked all but 6, with the majority in traffic-driving positions (top 20). Google didn\u2019t rank a single one.<\/p> <h2>So, If This Is Heavily Dependent On Bing Indexing, Is Clarity\u2019s Data Useful Outside Of The Bing\/Microsoft Ecosystem?<\/h2> <p>Because this is a Microsoft tool, the backend data feeding this dashboard is primarily capturing how your site is cited across Microsoft\u2019s AI surfaces (like Copilot and Bing generative search).<\/p> <p>It is not giving you a direct window into how OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT (using its own search), Google Gemini, or Perplexity are citing your links, because those platforms do not share their internal grounding logs with Microsoft.<\/p> <p>And historically, we as an industry have been neglectful of Bing.<\/p> <p>Even though the data collection source is skewed toward Microsoft\u2019s AI engine, the insights themselves are highly transferable to your broader, platform-agnostic AI optimization strategies.<\/p> <h3>Can We Assume Other LLMs Retrieve Data In The Same Way?<\/h3> <p>AI engines, whether Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot, use similar RAG frameworks to fetch data.<\/p> <p>If the Bing ecosystem flags that a specific page on your site has a high \u201cShare of Authority\u201d for a complex query, it means that page is structured perfectly for AI consumption (clear tables, bullet points, direct answers). Data suggests that you can replicate that formatting across your site to appeal to Google Gemini as well.<\/p> <p>However, this can be argued against as other research suggests that the similarity between LLMs is dependent on positional biases, and some may use the\u00a0SDSR method rather than RAG.<\/p> <p>Researchers in SEO have also found that ChatGPT has started to use Google Search as a fallback, when it was initially Bing.<\/p> <h2>In Summary<\/h2> <p>If your audience doesn\u2019t touch the Microsoft ecosystem, this dashboard won\u2019t give you a perfect 1-to-1 reflection of your total AI traffic, but it doesn\u2019t make the data useless.<\/p> <p>What grounding queries reveal is how AI systems distill user intent into retrievable search terms. That process is broadly consistent across platforms, even when the underlying indexes differ. A page earning citations in Copilot is doing something right structurally with clear answers, well-scoped topics, content aligned with how AI engines translate questions into queries. The Bing dependency tells you where the data comes from. The structural patterns tell you something more transferable.<\/p> <p>The gap data is equally instructive. Pages your site ranks for in Bing that never appear as grounding queries signal a mismatch. Either the content isn\u2019t structured for AI retrieval, or the topic isn\u2019t one AI engines are actively grounding answers around.<\/p> <p>Treat Clarity\u2019s Citations dashboard as a useful proxy or \u201clab environment\u201d and window into how LLMs read, slice\/chunk, and credit your website\u2019s content. Even if Copilot isn\u2019t your primary AI traffic source, the patterns it surfaces are worth paying attention to.<\/p> <p><strong>More Resources:<\/strong><\/p> <hr\/> <p><em>Featured Image: Prostock-studio\/Shutterstock<\/em><\/p> <\/div> <p>Generative AI,SEO#Microsoft #Clarity #Shows #Grounding #Queries #Citations #sejournal #TaylorDanRW1779354158<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Microsoft Clarity made AI citations available to all users, it opened up a new playground for SEOs to harvest AI visibility data. Finally, we can see the exact \u201cgrounding queries\u201d an AI engine uses to pull our content. It raises a massive question because this is a Microsoft tool: Are the insights useless if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[10352,1727,14429,734,774,80,4221,1748],"class_list":["post-8573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","tag-citations","tag-clarity","tag-grounding","tag-microsoft","tag-queries","tag-sejournal","tag-shows","tag-taylordanrw"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}