Key takeaways
- Microsoft is adding an AI Grounding preference, set page by page, that controls whether Bing, Copilot and Microsoft 365 may use a page to help inform AI-generated answers [1].
- A new
DisallowExtendedvalue allows grounding in Microsoft-operated products but excludes grounding services Microsoft provides to third parties, such as Web IQ and grounding through API access in Foundry [1]. - Microsoft will honor the new preferences as it crawls from Feb. 1, 2027. Sites that rely on NoArchive or NoCache must act by March 1, 2027, to keep their restrictions [1].
Direct answer: Publishers will be able to tell Microsoft separately whether their pages may train AI models and whether they may ground AI answers, without affecting eligibility for Bing search results [1]. Both preferences default to Allow.
What happened: In a Microsoft Bing blog post on Oct. 30, 2026, principal product manager Krishna Madhavan announced “independent preferences for training and grounding,” which will replace NoArchive and NoCache as Microsoft’s controls for those uses [1]. The post covers web content collected through Microsoft’s crawlers and used for training or for “web-grounded responses in Bing, Copilot, and Microsoft 365” [1].
What are the new settings?
- AI Training. Set for a site or path in robots.txt with the shared
__usage_ai-trainingtoken, or for a page with a meta tag or HTTP header, which overrides robots.txt [1]. - AI Grounding. Page level only, through
<meta name="Bingbot" content="ai-grounding:disallow">or an X-Robots-Tag header. There is no site-wide robots.txt grounding preference [1]. - Three grounding values.
Allow(default),DisallowExtended(Microsoft-operated experiences only) andDisallow(no grounding use) [1].
Microsoft says the preferences govern use of content, not crawl access, and that Allow does not override a robots.txt rule blocking Bingbot [1]. It warns that choosing DisallowExtended or Disallow “will significantly reduce your content’s visibility in AI-generated experiences” [1]. Of allowing training or grounding, it says: “Neither choice guarantees inclusion, traffic, or payment” [1].
What are the dates?
- Dec. 15, 2026. Temporary grounding preferences open in Bing Webmaster Tools, only for sites using NoArchive or NoCache on that date [1].
- Feb. 1, 2027. Microsoft starts honoring the new preferences as pages are crawled [1].
- March 1, 2027. After this date, NoArchive and NoCache are no longer read as training or grounding preferences [1].
- Sept. 30, 2027. Remaining temporary grounding preferences expire [1].
Microsoft says pages that use NoArchive or NoCache and have no temporary preference recorded by March 1 “default to Allow for grounding” until it recrawls them and discovers the new AI Grounding preference [1]. It adds that IndexNow can raise the chance of a recrawl but does not guarantee a date [1].
Why it matters
Microsoft defines grounding as using content to help inform AI-generated responses, with links and citations as the path back to the source [1]. Our view: unlike the shared training signal announced alongside it, this setting is a control on AI visibility itself. DisallowExtended also separates Microsoft’s own products from grounding services it provides to third parties. Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report, which we covered on Oct. 28, is where site owners can follow their citations in Bing’s AI answers.
What we don’t know yet
- Which third-party products use Microsoft’s grounding services, beyond the Web IQ and Foundry examples Microsoft gives [1].
- Whether other AI providers will offer a comparable grounding preference.
- How quickly Microsoft will recrawl pages after Feb. 1, 2027.
What to do now
- Check whether your site uses NoArchive or NoCache. If it does on Dec. 15, 2026, and you want to keep grounding restrictions, publish the new page preferences and record a temporary preference in Bing Webmaster Tools before March 1, 2027 [1].
- If you want your pages eligible to inform Copilot and Bing AI answers and do not use NoArchive or NoCache, you need no grounding action: Allow is the default, though it does not guarantee a citation [1].
- Treat training and grounding as separate decisions; Microsoft says one does not change the other [1].
Update log: Oct. 31, 2026 — First published.
Sources
[1] Madhavan, K. (2026, Oct. 30). “Your content, your choice: clearer preferences for training and grounding.” Microsoft Bing Blogs. Accessed Oct. 31, 2026. https://blogs.bing.com/search/2026/10/your-content-your-choice-clearer-preferences-for-training-and-grounding/
How this was made
Prepared with AI assistance from the sources cited above. Editorial review by Nhi Phan (editor) and fact-checking by Jackies continue after publication; any change will be recorded in the update log and in our Corrections Policy and Log.