By Steve Merrill, Founder of WRKNG Digital — June 24, 2026
Microsoft Just Opened a New Distribution Channel for Product Discovery
Microsoft Copilot Shopping is live globally as of this month. Every market. That means when someone opens Edge, asks Copilot "find me a good standing desk under $400," and hits enter, it returns product cards with pricing, images, and purchase links pulled directly from merchant feeds.
Products with an approved feed surface. Products without one don't appear at all.
We've audited over 60 Shopify stores in the last six months. The majority had never touched Microsoft Merchant Center. Not because they decided it wasn't worth it.That window won't stay quiet for long.
What Is Microsoft Copilot Shopping and How Does It Work?
Copilot Shopping is a product discovery layer integrated into three Microsoft surfaces: Bing Search, Microsoft Edge, and Windows directly. When a user asks a product question, Copilot can generate a recommendation response that includes live product listings with real-time pricing, merchant names, and direct purchase links.
Those listings come from Microsoft Merchant Center, which is Microsoft's product data platform. Think of it as the Bing equivalent of Google Merchant Center. Copilot's shopping engine doesn't crawl merchant pages for this data. It pulls from structured feed data merchants submit directly.
The global rollout matters because Copilot Shopping was previously limited in several markets. Now it's running in most of Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and beyond. The addressable reach just got significantly larger.
What Data Sources Does Copilot Shopping Pull From?
The feed is the primary source. Copilot's shopping responses focus on merchants with complete, accurate product data: descriptive titles, detailed product descriptions, GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers), high-resolution images, current pricing, and real-time inventory status.
Microsoft's product feed specification covers 40+ attributes. Most merchants who connect Shopify to Merchant Center via the default app submit 10-15 of them. The gap between a minimum viable feed and a fully built-out feed is where most of the visibility difference lives.
Structured data on your Shopify store, specifically Product and Offer schema markup, plays a secondary role. It doesn't replace the feed requirement, but it can reduce feed disapprovals and improve data consistency. Stores with complete schema tend to see fewer mismatches between feed data and on-page data, which Microsoft flags as a trust signal.
How Do I Get My Shopify Products Listed on Microsoft Copilot?
Five steps. None require Microsoft Ads.
Step 1: Create a Microsoft Merchant Center account. Go to ads.microsoft.com, navigate to Merchant Center, and set up a new store. Verify your domain using the meta tag or file upload method. This is the same process as Google Search Console verification, so if you've done that before, it'll feel familiar.
Step 2: Install the Microsoft and Bing app on Shopify. Search the Shopify App Store for "Microsoft and Bing." Install it and connect it to your Merchant Center account. Shopify automatically generates a product feed in the format Merchant Center expects. The connection takes under 10 minutes.
Step 3: Review disapprovals and fix feed quality. Within 24-48 hours of your first sync, Microsoft Merchant Center will flag disapproved products. The most common reasons: missing GTINs for branded items, price mismatches between feed and product page, images below the required resolution, and product descriptions under 70 characters. Fix these before moving on. Disapproved products won't surface in Copilot regardless of how good the rest of your feed is.
Step 4: Opt into free product listings. In Merchant Center, under "Performance," find the free listings option and enable it. This is separate from paid Shopping campaigns. Opting in makes your approved products eligible for organic placement in Bing Shopping and, critically, in Copilot Shopping responses. Free. No campaign required.
Step 5: Connect to Bing Webmaster Tools. Link your Shopify store to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. This step helps Bing index your product pages accurately and validates that your on-site structured data aligns with your feed. Mismatches between what's in your feed and what's on your pages are a common reason Copilot suppresses otherwise eligible products.
Total time to complete all five steps: under two hours for most stores.
Is Microsoft Bing AI Shopping Worth Optimizing For?
The numbers say yes.
Bing processes roughly 12 billion searches per month globally, according to Statista's latest search engine market data. That's a fraction of Google's volume, but Copilot's distribution goes beyond the search bar. It's accessible from the Windows taskbar, built into Edge's sidebar, and embedded in Microsoft 365. A user doesn't have to visit Bing.com for Copilot to surface your products.
Microsoft Edge has over 400 million active users globally, per Microsoft's reported figures. A meaningful percentage have Copilot enabled by default. That's a large audience that most Shopify stores have zero presence with right now.
The competition gap is the strongest argument. I've pulled feed audit data on stores that had near-zero visibility in Google Shopping for competitive product terms, but ranked in the top three on Bing Shopping for the same queries because the merchant competition was thin. Less competition doesn't mean less opportunity. It means the stores that show up with clean data stand out more.
What Most Shopify Merchants Are Getting Wrong
Setup is the easy part. Feed quality is where stores lose.
A merchant can connect Shopify to Microsoft Merchant Center in an afternoon. But if product titles are generic ("Blue Shirt" instead of "Men's Slim Fit Oxford Shirt in Navy Blue"), descriptions are thin, or GTINs are missing for branded products, Copilot will surface competitors with better-structured data instead.
GTINs are the most common gap we see. Merchants who manufacture their own products often don't have GTINs. Microsoft allows "identifier_exists: false" for truly custom products, which is the correct way to handle this. But merchants selling branded goods without GTINs in their feed get filtered out for structured catalog queries where Copilot matches on product database records. That's a fixable problem that most merchants don't know they have.
Image quality is the second issue. Microsoft requires minimum dimensions of 100x100 pixels for non-apparel and 250x250 for apparel. Technically compliant. But the feeds that actually win Copilot placements are using product shots at 1000x1000 or higher. The minimum gets you approved. The higher resolution gets you placed.
The merchants collecting early visibility in Copilot Shopping right now aren't doing anything complicated. They set up their feed, fixed their data quality, and opted into free listings. That combination is enough to get ahead of 90% of the market while most stores aren't paying attention.
I've made the mistake of waiting too long on new distribution channels before. Watched competitors who moved two years earlier compound their advantage to a point I couldn't close. This is that kind of window.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Microsoft Copilot Shopping and how does it work?
Copilot Shopping is an AI-powered product discovery feature built into Bing, Edge, and Windows. When a user asks Copilot a product question, it returns listings from Microsoft Merchant Center feeds. Merchants need an approved feed in Merchant Center to appear in those results. No feed means no placement, regardless of how good the products are.
How do I get my Shopify products listed on Microsoft Copilot?
Install the Microsoft and Bing app from the Shopify App Store and connect it to a new Microsoft Merchant Center account. Fix any feed disapprovals, then opt into free product listings inside Merchant Center. Verify your store with Bing Webmaster Tools to complete the setup. The whole process takes under two hours for most stores.
Is Microsoft Copilot Shopping free for merchants?
Yes. Microsoft's free product listings program through Merchant Center makes you eligible for Copilot Shopping placement without paid campaigns. You need a verified Merchant Center account and an approved product feed, but you don't need to run Microsoft Ads to get started.
Is Microsoft Bing AI Shopping worth the effort?
Yes, and the timing matters. Bing handles around 12 billion monthly searches globally. Microsoft Edge has over 400 million users with Copilot available by default. Merchant competition in Microsoft Merchant Center is much lower than Google Shopping right now, which means stores with complete feed data get better relative visibility at a lower cost of effort.
Does Copilot Shopping require Microsoft Ads?
No. Free product listings in Microsoft Merchant Center are completely separate from paid campaigns. Set up your Merchant Center account, sync your Shopify feed, fix disapprovals, and opt into free listings. That's the full path to Copilot Shopping eligibility without any ad spend.
Shopify stores without a Microsoft Merchant Center feed are invisible to Copilot Shopping. That's a fixable problem. The setup takes an afternoon. The feed quality work takes longer, but it compounds. Stores that build complete, accurate feeds now will have an advantage that's hard to close once this channel gets competitive.
If you want to know where your store stands across all AI shopping channels, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, we run a full AI Commerce Readiness audit that covers the whole picture.
