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Copilot

Web grounding

Copilot basing its answer on current web search results and citing them, something Copilot Chat often does by default without you asking.

How web grounding works in Copilot Your prompt becomes a short search query, Bing returns results, and Copilot answers with citations. The full prompt is not sent. Check the source before you repeat it. Yourprompt Shortsearch query Bingresults Answer withcitations Only a short query goes to Bing, not your full prompt Open the source before you repeat it

Web grounding means Copilot checks the web before it answers. When web content would help, Copilot sends Bing a short search query generated from your prompt, not the full prompt itself, and builds its answer on the results, with citations attached. In Copilot Chat this often happens by default. In Claude, web search is something you switch on.

Admins can turn web search off for the whole organisation, and it is off by default in some government clouds. So trust, but verify: a citation means Copilot found a source, not that it read it correctly or that the source is reliable. Open it before you repeat a figure to a colleague or a client.

Often confused with: Grounding in your work data. Web grounding draws on public web results; grounding through Work IQ and Microsoft Graph draws on your own mail, files and meetings, and needs the paid add-on.

See it in a lesson: Copilot modes and grounding

Related terms

GroundingWeb searchMicrosoft 365 Copilot ChatHallucination

Further reading

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