Semrush Will Stop Tracking Copilot on November 9. Bing's Own Report Is a Different Measurement Path

Semrush will stop tracking Microsoft Copilot in its enterprise AI visibility product on November 9, 2026. Brands that relied on a prompt-tracking dashboard for Copilot will lose that line on that date. The other record they can read, Bing's own AI Performance report, works on a different principle, and Microsoft has announced no change to it.

What is established

Glenn Gabe posted on October 29 that Semrush had emailed customers the day before: Copilot visibility tracking "will be discontinued as of 11/9 based on how Microsoft is preventing the tracking of Copilot data." PPC Land reported the notice's own wording: recent changes to Copilot's access requirements "prevent AI visibility platforms, including Semrush Enterprise AIO, from collecting the data needed to track Copilot performance." Tracking of Semrush's other supported platforms is unaffected, according to the notice as PPC Land quotes it. Paralax has not seen the notice itself.

Semrush did not name the Microsoft change. Two public Microsoft facts fit the description, and neither is confirmed as the cause:

• Sign-in. On August 31, Search Engine Roundtable reported that going directly to Copilot required an account. Krishna Madhavan of Microsoft AI told it, "Going forward we are requiring all Copilot users to login." Microsoft's Michael Schechter said Copilot Search answers inside Bing do not require sign-in.
• Bots. Microsoft's Copilot Terms of Use, read on November 1, require a Microsoft account and say: "Don't use tools or computer programs (like bots or scrapers) to access Copilot." The terms exclude people signing in with work, school or Entra accounts.

No Microsoft statement in these sources mentions measurement vendors. One search on November 1 found no other tracking vendor announcing a Copilot change.

Two ways to measure Copilot

A prompt tracker sends buyer-style questions to an engine, repeatedly, and reads the answers. It needs repeatable access to the surface, so an account wall or a bot prohibition hits it directly.

AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools goes the other way. Microsoft reports, for a site you verify, how often its pages were cited in Copilot, Bing AI summaries and select partner integrations, with page-level counts and a sample of grounding queries. No prompt is sent. Microsoft labels the grounding queries a sample, and the report counts citations, not placement, ranking or importance.

The two answer different questions. A tracker shows what an engine says to a fixed question set, including brands that are named without a link. Bing's report shows only citations of your own verified site, and says nothing about competitors' answers except through the Topics Portfolio view added in October.

What to do before November 9

• Treat a Copilot line that goes flat or empty after November 9 as a collection gap. It is not a measured loss of visibility.
• Before that date, export any Copilot history you need. Semrush says it will keep historical Copilot data for customers who choose that option, and the prompts keep counting against the balance.
• Ask any other vendor how it collects Copilot answers and whether it relies on signed-in sessions. The IAB's measurement framework, as PPC Land describes it, asks providers to disclose their collection method and whether it complies with platform terms.
• Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools if you have not, and read AI Performance as the Copilot citation record for your own pages.

What is not known

Semrush has not said how it collected Copilot answers, or which Microsoft change blocked it. Whether other trackers are affected is unknown. Paralax did not test any tracker's Copilot collection, and has not tested whether AI Performance data changes after November 9. The Machine Relations Index does not collect Copilot answers: its stored runs cover Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, so this change does not alter its data.

Evidence scope. Primary posts and Microsoft's terms read on November 1, 2026; the Semrush notice is quoted second-hand. The Copilot and Bing change log keeps the dated record.