What is Microsoft Copilot?

By the Variask team · Updated

Definition

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, built into Windows, Edge, Bing and Microsoft 365. It grounds its answers in Bing search results, so Bing visibility matters for appearing in Copilot.

Also called Copilot

How it works

  • Copilot searches Bing for the question.
  • It reads the results and writes an answer with sources.
  • It is widely used at work through Microsoft 365.

What it means for brands

  • Make sure your pages are indexed in Bing.
  • Track Copilot separately from ChatGPT.
Deep dive in Variask UniversityHow to rank in Microsoft Copilot

Questions

Microsoft Copilot:
common questions

Allow Bingbot, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap and publish clear answers.

No. It is a separate product grounded in Bing.

Related terms

Keep exploring

Technical

IndexNow

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website tell participating search engines, such as Bing, that a page was added, changed or removed, so it can be crawled sooner. Faster indexing in Bing also helps Copilot and other features that use Bing's index.

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Engines and surfaces

Answer engine

An answer engine is a search tool that replies with a direct, written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Overviews all work as answer engines.

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Technical

AI crawlers

AI crawlers are bots run by AI companies that visit websites to collect content, either to train models or to fetch pages live when an assistant answers a question.

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Full glossary