What Changed
On October 30, 2026, Microsoft announced two new page-level controls for how Bing content is used by AI. Training covers model training. Grounding covers using your page to inform AI-generated answers in Bing, Copilot and Microsoft 365. Until now, many sites used the old NoArchive and NoCache directives to keep content out of Copilot answers. Microsoft is retiring that use of them. If you rely on either, you have deadlines.
Step 1: Check Whether You Use NoArchive or NoCache
Search your templates and server config for noarchive and nocache in robots meta tags and X-Robots-Tag headers. If you don't use them, you are on the default: grounding allowed, training allowed. Many sites added them years ago for cache reasons and have forgotten.
Step 2: Choose a Grounding Value
| Value | Effect | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| allow (default) | Content can inform generated answers | Almost every brand page |
| ai-grounding:disallowextended | Grounding only in Microsoft's own products, such as Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Bing's AI answers. Excludes third-party grounding services such as Web IQ and grounding API access in Foundry | Sites that want Copilot visibility but not resale to other AI apps |
| ai-grounding:disallow | Content is not used to inform generated answers | Paid or licensed content |
Grounding is what gets you cited in Copilot. Blocking it removes you from those answers, though Microsoft says traditional Bing ranking is not affected.
Step 3: Write the Tag or Header
Grounding is page level only. There is no robots.txt version.
<meta name="Bingbot" content="ai-grounding:disallowextended">X-Robots-Tag: Bingbot: ai-grounding:disallowTraining works the same way at page level (ai-training:disallow) or site-wide through the shared robots.txt token, covered in setting the shared AI training signal. A page-level training setting overrides robots.txt.
Step 4: Meet the Deadlines
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| December 15, 2026 | Bing Webmaster Tools opens temporary grounding preferences, for sites using NoArchive or NoCache on that date |
| February 1, 2027 | New preferences take effect as Microsoft recrawls. Where new preferences are found, NoArchive and NoCache are disregarded for that site |
| March 1, 2027 | Deadline for NoArchive and NoCache sites to publish page-level grounding preferences and record a temporary preference in Webmaster Tools. After this, those directives are no longer read as AI preferences |
| September 30, 2027 | Temporary preferences expire, or sooner if the page is recrawled with a new preference |
If you use NoArchive to keep content out of Copilot and do nothing, your pages default to grounding allowed after March 1, 2027, until they are recrawled with a new setting.
Step 5: Get Recrawled
Publishing a tag does nothing until Bingbot sees it. Microsoft says IndexNow may raise the chance of a recrawl but doesn't guarantee a date. Submit changed URLs through IndexNow and check Webmaster Tools. The new preferences control content use, not crawling. An allow value does not override a robots.txt rule that blocks Bingbot.
Step 6: Measure
Compare how often Copilot and Bing AI answers cite your pages before and after the change. Blocking grounding on a page that used to be cited is the fastest way to lose visibility in Microsoft products.