Microsoft’s Advice on Optimising Your Content for AI Search

According to Microsoft Advertising (https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/post/2024/05/08/search-trends), the key pillars of AI visibility are:

• Clear, modular formatting that makes content easy to select

• Strong semantic signals using H1–H3 structure

• Use of schema markup to classify page types

• Avoiding info hidden inside PDFs, images without alt text, or expandable tabs

Why Microsoft’s Guidance Matters for AI SEO

Microsoft’s position is especially influential because Bing and Copilot feed multimodal AI systems across Windows, Edge, Office, and external APIs. Over 1 billion Windows devices now integrate Copilot experiences that rely on structured web data.

This means the brands that follow Microsoft’s formatting principles will disproportionately surface in AI answers, and those who ignore them risk becoming invisible.

At indexLab, we see this every day: businesses come to us after losing 20–40% of Google traffic, only to realise AI tools have become their new “search engine,” and they are not being cited anywhere.

The Shift From Ranking Pages to Selecting Snippets

In classical SEO, Google ranked full documents. Now, AI search engines such as Copilot or ChatGPT “slice” the web into extractable blocks.

According to Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/ai-overviews-seo-study-2024-435128), AI assistants are 70% more likely to extract segments, not whole pages.

Microsoft Advertising describes this as:

“AI search doesn’t just rank results. It selects from the content within results.”

This fundamentally changes AI SEO optimisation:

• Long, dense paragraphs become invisible

• Pages without schema markup lose context

• Non-modular content is skipped because AI can’t isolate the right part

This is why generative engine optimisation (GEO), also known as AI SEO, has become its own discipline.

Table: Microsoft’s Core Recommendations for AI Search Optimisation

The New AI SEO Pillars That Matter Most

1. Structure

AI models prefer information that resembles how they build answers. That means:

• Short, clear paragraphs

• Sections labelled with H2/H3

• Bullet list summaries

• HTML tables

• Q&A blocks

These formats map directly to how LLMs structure outputs.

2. Semantics

Semantics communicate meaning to AI models. You strengthen semantics by:

• Using explicit headings

• Adding schema markup

• Including alt text on images

• Writing in plain, unambiguous language

This is particularly important because, as Google’s Search Central documentation explains (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide), search systems increasingly rely on structured meaning over keyword matching.

3. Snippability

This is the new battleground of visibility.

Snippable content is:

• Modular

• Direct

• Easy to lift into an AI-generated answer

If your content is not broken into blocks, you don’t get selected.

Why Schema Markup Is Now Non-Negotiable

Schema markup used to be “nice to have.” In AI search, it’s a requirement.

Microsoft encourages the use of FAQ, HowTo, Product, Review, and Article schema because LLMs use schema to determine:

• What the content is

• What content means

• How content should be used

• Whether it can be trusted

According to Schema.org (https://schema.org/docs/faq.html), schema increases machine interpretability dramatically.

Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and ChatGPT rely on structured metadata to understand context reliably.

What to Avoid

Microsoft warns against the following, all of which make content unselectable for AI engines:

• PDFs containing core information

• Tabbed or accordion text that hides key content

• Long, unbroken paragraphs

• Images without alt text

• JavaScript-locked content

• Overly complex writing

Each of these creates barriers that prevent AI from extracting clear, coherent snippets.

This is echoed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C) (https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/), which highlights that hidden or unlabeled content decreases machine accessibility.

Additional Microsoft-Aligned Tactics to Improve AI Visibility

Add Section Summaries

End every major section with a 1–2 sentence summary. AI models use these as clean extraction blocks.

Optimise for “answer intent”

This means placing answers at the top of the page; exactly like the opening paragraph of this article.

Strengthen E-E-A-T

While E-E-A-T remains a Google concept, LLMs also prioritise trusted sources.

• Link to reputable research

• Provide transparent sourcing

• Use expert quotes

• Demonstrate industry authority

Improve AI crawlability

AI models rely heavily on:

• Semantic HTML

• XML sitemaps

• Clean internal linking

• Clear metadata

The Growing Importance of “Being Cited by AI”

AI assistants now act as filters. If you’re not cited, you’re not seen. This is why so many brands seek help from an AI SEO consultant or agencies like indexLab, to ensure they appear in:

• ChatGPT answers

• Perplexity citations

• Bing Copilot summaries

• Gemini AI Overviews

• Claude recommendations

This is the heart of AI visibility optimisation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What does Microsoft recommend for optimising content for AI search?

Microsoft advises using clear structure, modular formatting, schema markup, and easily extractable snippets so AI models can understand and select your content.

2. How does structured data improve AI visibility?

Structured data helps AI systems classify your content accurately, increasing your chances of appearing in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.

3. Why is “snippability” important for AI SEO?

AI tools extract short, self-contained blocks of text. Improving snippability makes your content more likely to be cited in AI-driven search results.

Conclusion

Microsoft’s advice makes one thing unequivocally clear:
AI search rewards precision, structure, clarity, and modularity.

To succeed, brands must treat their content like building blocks that AI systems can effortlessly extract, classify, and reuse. Traditional SEO remains important, but the future belongs to content that is easy for AI to understand and lift directly into answers.

👉 Book your AI Visibility Audit with IndexLab today and make sure your brand isn’t invisible in the age of AI search