· Notes for owners
Does Brave's index hold your pages, and can you see AI citations?
Brave sells its search index to AI companies. Here is how to check whether your pages are in it, and which reports show AI citations.
On November 6, 2026, Search Engine Journal published a column on Brave. Brave sells access to its search index to AI companies through a product called the Brave Search API. The New York Times has sued Brave over copying webpages and selling that content. The column says Brave had not responded when it was written.
For a business that already sells, two questions follow. Is your site in that index? And can you see whether AI answers use your pages?
Brave's index may hold your pages, and the check takes about 30 seconds
The column's author says the check is quick. Open Brave's search site, type site: followed by your domain, and look at what appears. Pages that show up are in Brave's index.
Run the check yourself and see which of your pages appear.
The New York Times says Brave copied more than 30 billion webpages without identifying itself. Those are the newspaper's claims. Brave's own AI page describes its index as "over 30 billion pages, with millions of new pages indexed each day."
You cannot block Brave's crawler without blocking Google
Sites list the crawlers they allow in a file called robots.txt. That only works when a crawler has a name. Brave's help page says its crawler "does not advertise a differentiated user agent." In other words, a site has no name to list.
Brave says it follows Google's rules instead. Whatever Googlebot may not read, Brave will not read either. So you cannot let Google in and keep Brave out. You get both, or neither.
The only exit the column names is the noindex tag. That tag tells Google to drop the page too.
The choice is Google visibility on one side and exposure in Brave's index on the other. Which one is worth more depends on your own numbers, and that call belongs to you and whoever runs your site. The lawsuit is unresolved. The column says Brave had not yet answered the complaint, so for now these are claims.
Three reports show whether AI answers cite your pages
Microsoft opened AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview on February 10, 2026. It describes the report as showing "how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations." On June 16, 2026, Microsoft added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare. Grounding queries are now "classified into broader categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational."
On June 3, 2026, Google introduced Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console. The impressions figure counts "How often URLs from your site appeared in generative AI features in Search." Google says it is "rolling these reports out to a subset of websites," so check whether your account shows them.
Google's Gemini API offers a third route. Grounding with Google Search returns citation information "linking parts of the response to their sources." Gemini is an API, so this route means building a small test that you or your developer run.
A citation counts an appearance, not a visit
The reports count appearances. They do not show that anyone arrived or bought.
Microsoft says the average cited pages figure "does not indicate ranking, authority, or the role of any page within an individual answer." One analysis of the Bing report, dated February 12, 2026, says the report has "No click-through data." That is a practitioner's blog post, and it pulled 91 days of Bing data: 19,717 citations across 86 pages. The analysis is worth reading for its method. Microsoft's posts do not say how many days of history the Bing report keeps.
Search Console counts impressions. It does not count clicks. Use your own visit and sales records to judge whether an AI answer brought a customer.
What to do this week
- Check which of your pages Brave's index shows. Open Brave's search site, type site: and your domain, and write down what appears. Compare what appears with your current pages.
- Decide the crawler question with whoever runs your site before changing anything. The noindex route also removes pages from Google.
- Read your robots.txt file. If it names AI crawlers, know that Brave's crawler cannot be added by name. Brave's help page says its crawler "does not advertise a differentiated user agent."
- Open the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools if you use it. Check the generative AI figures in Search Console if your account has them.
- Each week, write down citations and impressions next to your own visit and sales numbers. The reports do not show clicks, so tying AI answers to sales is work you have to do yourself.
- Give this list to whoever touches your website, email or accounts.
We are your technology department. We map the workflow, build the software that fits it, and run it. Checks like these are part of how we drive organic growth and volume for businesses that already sell. If you want help setting them up, or deciding what to do about Brave, start with a discovery call. Your next step to grow is a call away.