The Websites Microsoft Copilot Cites Most

When I talk to business owners about AI search, Microsoft Copilot is usually the assistant they forget. Most think, “Nobody uses Copilot, so I’ll focus on ChatGPT and Google.” That is a mistake, and the data on Copilot’s sources shows why.

Copilot is built into Windows, Edge, Bing and Microsoft 365. It reaches people at work, at their desks, often while they are researching a purchase. And when you look at the websites it cites most, it behaves very differently from every other assistant. It reads less like a research tool and more like a shopping mall with a library attached.

In this article, I will explain what the latest data says about the websites Copilot cites most, why its list looks the way it does, and how you can see your own Copilot citations for free. In brief: for Copilot, product catalogs and Bing’s index matter more than forums.

How Ahrefs measured Copilot’s favorite sources

The data I use here comes from Ahrefs’ report on the 50 most-cited websites in Copilot by Ryan Law. It was published on June 1, 2026 and updated on September 2, 2026. Ahrefs refreshes it monthly, so check their page for the latest version.

The method is the same one Ahrefs uses for its other assistant lists:

• It uses Ahrefs Brand Radar, which records AI responses to real, search-backed queries.
• It covers more than 3 million US queries across all topics (September 2026 snapshot).
• Each domain gets a “mention share”: its citations as a percentage of the combined citations of the top 50 sources.
• It also shows how many distinct pages were cited from each domain, and the domain’s Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR), a 0–100 score of backlink strength.

Keep in mind that mention share compares the top 50 sites against each other. It is not a share of every citation Copilot made.

Amazon and Walmart: why Copilot’s list reads like a shopping mall

Here are the top ten domains in the September 2026 snapshot. I have only listed ten; the full 50 are on the Ahrefs page.

Rank	Domain	Mention share	Distinct pages cited	DR
1	amazon.com	16.8%	775,592	96
2	walmart.com	12.6%	544,116	92
3	en.wikipedia.org	7.6%	118,076	97
4	scienceinsights.org	3.5%	55,040	70
5	engineerfix.com	3.3%	73,880	59
6	grokipedia.com	3.1%	62,702	78
7	goto.walmart.com	3.0%	88,672	92
8	target.com	2.8%	80,247	91
9	biologyinsights.com	2.5%	56,374	71
10	etsy.com	2.4%	151,372	94

Source: Ahrefs, The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Copilot (September 2026 snapshot).

Amazon and Walmart (including Walmart’s goto.walmart.com subdomain) together take roughly 32% of the top-50 mention share. Add Target and Etsy, and retail is well over a third. Further down the list you find Home Depot, Best Buy, Macy’s, Lowe’s, Wayfair, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, Alibaba, eBay and Instacart.

Look at the page counts, too. Copilot cited more than 775,000 different Amazon pages. That is product pages, not a few famous articles. When someone asks Copilot which air fryer or office chair to buy, it often points straight to a listing.

Ahrefs links this to Microsoft’s commercial direction. Citing an Axios report, the article says that Microsoft is now pushing shopping and checkout directly into Copilot chats. It also notes the size of the audience:

“Whatever Copilot cites, in other words, lands in front of a vast, work-focused audience.”

— Ahrefs, The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Copilot

Per the same article, Microsoft says the Copilot apps alone have more than 100 million monthly active users, and more than 800 million people use Copilot-powered features across its products.

No Reddit, three dictionaries and some surprising small sites

What is missing from Copilot’s list is just as telling as what is on it.

Reddit is not in the top 50

This surprised me. Reddit is the most-cited site in both Gemini and Grok. In Copilot, it does not appear in the top 50 at all. YouTube is there, but only at number 11 with 1.9%. Community discussion simply carries less weight in Copilot’s answers than in other assistants.

Reference sites carry a lot of weight

Wikipedia is third. But Copilot also cites three dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Collins and Cambridge), Britannica and wikiHow. That fits a work audience asking “what does this term mean” and “how do I do this” questions.

Grokipedia ranks sixth

Grokipedia, the AI-written encyclopedia from Elon Musk’s xAI, ranks sixth in Copilot with 3.1% and nearly 63,000 cited pages. That is a Microsoft assistant citing a rival’s encyclopedia heavily. If you want to understand that site, read my post on Grokipedia vs Wikipedia and whether brands should care.

Lower-authority sites get in, too

Several top-ten sites have modest Domain Ratings. Scienceinsights.org (DR 70), engineerfix.com (DR 59) and biologyinsights.com (DR 71) all rank above Etsy. Further down, a few sites in the top 50 have very low DRs. Ahrefs doesn’t analyze why. My reading is that Copilot is willing to cite niche informational sites that answer a question directly, even without a strong link profile. That is good news for smaller publishers, but it also means the list can change quickly. Ahrefs shows one site dropping 12 places and another rising 23 places in a single month.

What Copilot’s source types suggest

Here is my own rough grouping of the full top 50. Ahrefs does not publish a breakdown by source type, so treat the counts as approximate.

Source type	Examples	Approx. count in top 50	What it suggests
Retail and marketplaces	Amazon, Walmart, Target, Etsy, Home Depot, Best Buy, Wayfair	15–16	Product listings are a primary answer format
Reference	Wikipedia, Grokipedia, Merriam-Webster, Britannica, wikiHow	7–8	Definitions and how-to questions are common
Niche informational sites	Science Insights, EngineerFix, Biology Insights	10+	Direct, topic-focused answers can beat authority
Health	Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Healthline, WebMD	4	Health answers go to known medical names
Auto and consumer trust	KBB, Edmunds, Consumer Reports, BBB, Trustpilot	5	Reviews and ratings still matter for big purchases
Video, social and portals	YouTube, LinkedIn, Yahoo, AOL, Forbes	5	A smaller role than in other assistants

LinkedIn is the only Microsoft-owned site in the top 50, at number 37 with 0.8%. MSN, which you might expect Microsoft to favor, does not appear.

Bing is the door into Copilot

To make sense of this list, remember where Copilot gets its web results: Bing. That is why I always tell clients that Copilot visibility starts with Bing visibility. If Bing hasn’t crawled and indexed a page, Copilot has little chance of citing it.

Microsoft has said this quite directly. In February 2026, the Bing Webmaster team published advice for sites that want to be cited in AI answers. Freshness was at the top:

“Accurate and up to date content is important for inclusion and citation in AI-generated answers.”

— Microsoft Bing, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview

The same post recommends:

• Using IndexNow to tell participating search engines when you add, update or remove content. IndexNow is a simple ping that says “this URL changed, please re-crawl it.”
• Using clear headings, tables and FAQ sections so key facts are easy for AI systems to pick out.
• Backing up claims with examples, data and cited sources.
• Keeping text, images and video consistent with each other.
• Registering local businesses with Bing Places for Business.

Notice how well this matches the list. Retail product pages are updated constantly, they are highly structured, and they are full of specs and reviews. They are exactly the kind of page Microsoft says it wants to cite. I cover the full Bing setup in my guides to Bing Webmaster Tools and Microsoft Copilot and Bing SEO.

Seeing your own Copilot citations in Bing Webmaster Tools

Here is something Copilot offers that most other assistants don’t: a free, first-party report of your own citations. Search Engine Land first reported a limited beta on January 27, 2026, and Microsoft opened AI Performance as a public preview on February 10, 2026.

According to Microsoft’s announcement, the report covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It shows:

• Total citations over a chosen period
• Average cited pages, the daily average of unique pages from your site that were cited
• Grounding queries, a sample of the key phrases the AI used when it retrieved your content
• Page-level citation activity, so you can see which URLs are cited
• Trends over time

Microsoft adds a fair warning: these numbers show how often pages are cited, not their importance, ranking or placement in the answer. And it does not show clicks.

Here is how I suggest you use it:

1. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already, and submit your XML sitemap.
2. Turn on IndexNow through your CMS or SEO plugin so updates reach Bing quickly.
3. Open the AI Performance report and export the page-level data.
4. List your top ten cited pages and note what they have in common: format, depth, freshness.
5. Read the grounding queries. They show the phrasing Copilot uses when it searches. Treat them like a new kind of keyword list.
6. Find important pages with zero citations and compare them with the pages that do get cited.
7. Update and re-ping those weaker pages, then check again in four to six weeks.

What one agency’s report revealed

Search Influence published an early look at its own data on February 12, 2026. Across 19,717 Copilot citations on 86 pages, one page took 69% of all citations. The top four pages took 90%. The lead page was a detailed tool comparison with pricing, features and named vendors. Daily citations also fell about 97% between early December and February, which the author linked to freshness and new competing content.

“In AI search, being the second-best resource on a topic might mean getting zero citations.”

— Will Scott, Search Influence, Inside Bing’s New AI Performance Report

That is one site’s data, so I treat it as an example, not a rule. But it lines up with the Ahrefs picture: Copilot concentrates its citations on a few very specific, very useful pages.

Which Copilot sources are within your reach

Not every site on the list is a realistic target. Here is how I would sort them for a typical business.

Source	Reachable?	What to do
Amazon, Walmart, Target, Etsy, Home Depot	Yes, if you sell physical products	List there; write complete titles, specs and descriptions; earn genuine reviews
Your own site	Yes	Get indexed in Bing, use IndexNow, publish specific comparison and how-to pages, keep them fresh
Bing Places	Yes, for local businesses	Claim and complete your listing
LinkedIn	Yes	Keep company and leader profiles active with useful posts, especially for B2B
Trustpilot, BBB, Consumer Reports	Partly	Claim profiles, collect reviews, respond to complaints
Wikipedia, Britannica, dictionaries	No (not directly)	Earn independent coverage over time
Grokipedia	Limited	Monitor what it says about you

For product sellers, the biggest lever is clear: your marketplace listings may be the pages Copilot cites when it recommends your product. My guides to marketplace SEO and getting products chosen by AI shopping agents cover how to make those listings stronger.

How Copilot differs from Gemini and Grok

Using the same Ahrefs method, here is how Copilot compares with two other assistants on the source types that matter most to marketers.

Signal	Copilot (Sept 2026)	Gemini (Sept 2026)	Grok (June 2026)
#1 source	Amazon, 16.8%	Reddit, 28.5%	Reddit, 16.3%
Reddit	Not in top 50	#1	#1
YouTube	#11, 1.9%	#2, 14.6%	#2, 15.1%
Wikipedia	#3, 7.6%	#3, 8.8%	#8, 3.4%
Main search backbone	Bing	Google Search	Web plus X

Sources: Ahrefs’ lists for Copilot, Gemini and Grok.

So if your AI plan is “post on Reddit and make YouTube videos,” it may work well for Gemini and Grok and do very little for Copilot. I cover the other two in detail in my posts on the websites Gemini cites most and the websites Grok cites most. For ChatGPT and Perplexity, see the sites ChatGPT cites most and the sites Perplexity cites most.

Example: a home office furniture seller checks its Copilot footprint

Let me show how this could work in practice. The business and numbers below are hypothetical.

A small online store sells standing desks and office chairs. It sells on its own site and on Amazon. The owner verifies the site in Bing Webmaster Tools and opens AI Performance. Over 90 days, the report shows 1,200 citations across 14 pages. Two buying guides take 900 of them (75%). Its 60 product pages get almost none.

The grounding queries tell the story. Most look like “standing desk height for 6 foot person” and “best ergonomic chair under 300.” Those are question-style searches, and the buying guides answer them directly. The product pages don’t.

So the owner does three things:

• Adds a short, factual “who this desk is for” section and a spec table to the ten best-selling product pages.
• Refreshes the two buying guides with current prices and models, then pings them through IndexNow.
• Rewrites the Amazon listings so titles and bullet points match the same specs, because Amazon is Copilot’s most-cited site.

Six weeks later, they compare the citation count, the number of cited pages and which grounding queries now include their URLs. Even if total citations barely move, seeing product pages start to appear is a real sign of progress.

What this Copilot data can and can’t tell you

I trust this data for direction. I don’t treat it as a fixed ranking. Here is why:

• US only, one month. Copilot in other countries may lean on local retailers and publishers.
• Heavy monthly movement. Some sites jumped or dropped more than ten places in one month.
• Top-50 denominator. Mention share is relative to the 50 biggest sources, not to all citations.
• Search-backed queries. The prompts are based on search keywords, which may favor product and definition questions.
• No click data. Neither the Ahrefs list nor Bing’s AI Performance report shows how many people clicked through.
• Work versus consumer use. Copilot inside Microsoft 365 may behave differently from the consumer Copilot app. The list doesn’t split these.

Questions marketers ask about Copilot’s most-cited sites

Does Copilot use Google or Bing results?

Copilot is a Microsoft product grounded in Bing. Microsoft’s own AI Performance report sits inside Bing Webmaster Tools, which is a good sign that Bing indexing is the starting point for Copilot visibility.

Why is Amazon the most-cited site in Copilot?

Copilot cites a very large number of product pages: more than 775,000 Amazon pages in the September 2026 snapshot. Ahrefs connects this to Microsoft pushing shopping and checkout into Copilot chats.

Can I see how often Copilot cites my site?

Yes. The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, in public preview since February 2026, shows citations, cited pages and sample grounding queries. It does not show clicks.

Does Reddit matter for Copilot?

Much less than for other assistants. Reddit does not appear in Copilot’s top 50 in the September 2026 data, while it ranks first in Gemini and Grok.

Is IndexNow worth setting up for Copilot?

Yes. Microsoft recommends IndexNow so Bing learns about new or changed pages quickly, and it stresses that up-to-date content matters for citation in AI answers. Most popular CMSs and SEO plugins support it.

Where to start with Copilot this week

Copilot is easy to ignore and surprisingly easy to work on. Its sources lean heavily on retail catalogs and reference sites, it barely uses Reddit, and it gets its web results from Bing. Best of all, Microsoft gives you a free report of your own citations.

This week, I would verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, switch on IndexNow, and export your AI Performance data. Then pick your three most important pages that get no citations and make them more specific, more current and easier to quote. If you sell products, give your marketplace listings the same care.

If you’d like a team to handle this, we can audit your Bing and Copilot visibility and fix what’s holding you back. See our ecommerce SEO services, or get a free quote and tell us about your business.

Further reading on websites Copilot cites most

• The Websites Grok Cites Most
• Grokipedia vs Wikipedia: Should Brands Care?
• Agent-to-Agent Marketing: When AI Agents Talk to Other AI Agents

Sources for this Copilot citation analysis

1. Ahrefs – The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Copilot (Ryan Law, updated September 2, 2026)
2. Microsoft Bing – Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview (February 10, 2026)
3. Search Engine Land – Bing Webmaster Tools testing new AI Performance report (January 27, 2026)
4. Search Influence – Inside Bing’s New AI Performance Report: What 20,000 Copilot Citations Taught Us (February 12, 2026)
5. Ahrefs – The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Gemini (updated September 2, 2026)
6. Ahrefs – The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Grok (June 2026)