Search Console and Bing

AI citations tell you whether engines name and cite you. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools tell you what that is worth in visits, which queries already reach you, and whether your pages are even indexed. Connected to a domain, they feed the organic side of AmICited: the Traffic and Opportunities reports, annotation measurements, the “AI searches” report, and traffic columns in the site audit.

Both are available on every plan.

Before you start#

• Access to the property. You need a Google account with access to the Search Console property, or a Bing Webmaster Tools account with the site verified.
• Workspace admin rights. Only workspace administrators can connect integrations and change the mapping.
• Credits for the import. History is imported once, then updated daily. You see the cost before anything is charged (see Cost below).

Connect Search Console#

1. Open Data Sources

   Go to Data Sources. Search Console appears as Google Search under Organic. Click Connect. (You can also pick it in the last step of onboarding and connect later.)

2. Sign in with Google

   Authorize with the Google account that has access to the property. The connection is stored as a workspace integration, so other domains and the MCP server can reuse it.

3. Select the property

   Click Select property and choose the Search Console property that matches this domain.

4. Choose how much history to import

   Pick a history window. Each option shows its projected rows and one-time cost, measured from your property where possible. Search Console keeps about 16 months of data, so no backfill reaches further. Click Confirm and backfill.

Connect Bing Webmaster Tools#

Bing is connected with an API key. In Bing Webmaster Tools, open Settings → API access and create a key. In AmICited, go to Data Sources, click Connect on Bing Webmasters, paste the key and click Connect Bing Webmasters. The key is verified before it is saved, stored encrypted, and never shown again. Then select the site and choose a history window as above. Bing retains about 70 weeks of data.

What each brings#

Automatic indexing (Google) submits URLs through Google’s Indexing API when the daily sitemap crawl finds a page that is new or whose lastmod changed. It is best-effort and capped by Google’s daily quota. On the Bing side, IndexNow tells Bing and other IndexNow engines the moment a URL changes; it needs a key file hosted on your domain, which AmICited can generate for you.

Which reports use the data#

• Reports → Traffic. Traffic sources, Keywords, Query coverage, AI searches (queries containing a site: operator, treated as AI-assistant fan-out traffic), Site operators, N-grams, Pages, Directories, Index bloat, Click waterfall, Decay & growth, URL and keyword movers, Cannibalization, Content changes and Annotation outcomes.
• Reports → Opportunities. Striking distance, CTR gap, Quadrant, Paid gaps (with an ad platform) and the citation gap report, which joins your organic rank with your AI citation rate per prompt.
• Platform reports. A section each for Google Search and Bing Webmasters.
• Annotations. Organic clicks, impressions, CTR and position expectations.
• Site audit. Organic clicks next to each page’s internal PageRank.

See search and traffic reports for what each report answers.

Cost#

Connecting has two parts, both shown in the confirmation dialog before anything is saved or charged:

• One-time import. Billed by rows actually imported and kept: 1 credit per million rows. The estimate is a ±40% range. Long backfills run in batches, newest days first.
• Warehouse access. A flat daily fee per connected domain, set by your plan. Extra sources on a domain that is already connected add nothing.

If credits run out mid-import, it pauses and resumes after you top up rather than failing or truncating. See credits.

Sync status and disconnecting#

Each card shows its sync state: Not imported yet, Import running, Import up to date, Import incomplete, continuing, Import paused (credits required), Import failed, or Connection expired, reconnect required. An expired connection stops the daily import until you click Reconnect, which picks up where it left off.

Related#