What does copilot.microsoft.com mean as a referrer in my analytics?

Why visits show it

When web search is on, Copilot sends a short query to Bing. Microsoft’s help for Copilot Chat says a Sources button under the answer then shows the sources it used, and that Copilot Chat gives linked citations so people can read further. When someone clicks your page in that list in a browser, the browser passes on the site the click came from, and your analytics records copilot.microsoft.com.

The other addresses Copilot uses

Microsoft’s help for the Copilot app names two web addresses, copilot.cloud.microsoft and www.copilot.com, and apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android; Copilot also runs inside Edge. Copilot Chat for work is also reached through m365.cloud.microsoft. So a click from Copilot can arrive under any of these hosts, and a click from one of the apps may arrive with no referrer and land in direct. Put them together when you read your numbers, rather than treating copilot.microsoft.com as all of Copilot.

What it hides

The referrer is only the site name. When a click goes from one site to another, browsers by default send just the origin, not the full address; MDN documents this as the default referrer policy, strict-origin-when-cross-origin. You don’t see the question, the Bing query Copilot ran, or what Copilot said about you before the click.

What you do see is the page they landed on: the page Copilot chose to cite. Check that its facts (prices, limits, what the product does) are current, since visitors arrive expecting what Copilot told them.

How to get a firmer source

You can’t tag links Copilot picks. You can tag the ones you place yourself, for example a link to your site in a document or page people will open alongside Copilot:

https://example.com/?utm_source=copilot&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=shared-doc

For whether AI assistants are worth your attention at all, and how to get cited more, see the general answer.

With Nordva Launch

Launch counts copilot.microsoft.com, copilot.com and copilot.cloud.microsoft under AI assistants (a visit from m365.cloud.microsoft counts as referral), next to search, social, email, paid, referral and direct. A visit whose utm_source starts with copilot counts there too, even without a referrer, unless its medium says paid or email. With a waitlist form or identify after signup, and Stripe connected (read-only, every plan), you can see which paying customers first came from a Copilot host; grouping them by utm_source needs Builder.