How to get valid links when using Bing Grounding?

Hi Dan Fay

Copilot is deeply integrated with the full Bing API and uses rendered card data with click-through links and sometimes special plugins.

But Azure AI Agents’ Bing Grounding currently:

·       Uses a stripped-down search API, optimized for grounding LLM responses.

·       Does not expose full JSON from Bing Search (like URLs, snippets, contentUrls).

·       Returns summarized text and sometimes truncated URLs or just titles.

This is by design, not a bug — it's meant for fast retrieval + summarization, not hyperlinking.

There is a workaround: using the Bing Web Search REST API directly, instead of the built-in BingSearchTool.

Call Bing Web Search API manually from your agent

You’ll get actual, full article URLs in the response.

Solution: Replace BingSearchTool with a Custom Tool that Calls Bing API

Here’s how you do it.

Step-by-Step: Custom Bing Search Tool for Azure Agents with Real URLs

1.Get Bing Search API key

Go to Azure Portal → Bing Search v7, create a resource, and grab your API key and endpoint.

2.Create a custom tool using Bing REST API

from azure.ai.agents import Tool
import requests

class RealBingSearchTool(Tool):
    name = "real_bing_search"
    description = "Search the web using Bing and return full article URLs."

    def __call__(self, query: str) -> str:
        headers = {
            "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": "YOUR_BING_API_KEY",
        }
        params = {
            "q": query,
            "count": 5,
            "mkt": "en-US",
        }
        endpoint = "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search"
        response = requests.get(endpoint, headers=headers, params=params)
        results = response.json()

        # Extract links
        if "webPages" in results:
            output = "\n".join(
                [f"{item['name']} - {item['url']}" for item in results["webPages"]["value"]]
            )
            return output
        else:
            return "No results found."

3.Add to your Assistant Agent

from azure.ai.agents import AssistantAgent

agent = AssistantAgent(
    name="bing-urls-agent",
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant that returns actual article URLs.",
    tools=[RealBingSearchTool()]
)

4.Run your query

from azure.ai.agents import ChatPrompt

prompt = ChatPrompt.from_messages([
    ("user", "Search for recent news articles about the US economy. Return the actual full URLs to each article.")
])

response = agent.run(prompt)
print(response.message.content)

Example Output

US economy rebounds amid uncertainty - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/20/us-economy-news.html  
IMF cuts growth forecast - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/imf-us-growth-forecast-2025.html  
Trade tensions rising again - https://www.ft.com/content/some-article-link  

Hope this helps.

Thank you!

Hi Prashanth Veeragoni -

Unfortunately using the Bing Web Search API is not an option - as new signups and it's use seems to have been 'paused'. see these posts another post yet another post

If I try to create/deploy Bing Web Search API - I get the following error - so calling the Bing Web Search API directly (https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search) is a non-starter.

Deployment of new Bing resources is unavailable. If you want to leverage search results with LLMs, refer to the new Grounding with Bing Search product. You can learn more at aka.ms/AgentsBingDoc. For additional questions, please contact [email protected]. 

The link - aka.ms/AgentsBingDoc points to using the Grounding with Bing Search product - so it's not possible to create a Bing Web Search API deployment. Why don't they mention it anywhere on the site that the Bing Web Search API has been retired?

This gets us back to trying to get article URLs from Grounding with Bing Search - I understand that it maybe a design decision, but if Grounding with Bing Search doesn't return actual URLs, there is no way to know that it's not hallucinating, and the results can't really be trusted.

Hi Dan Fay,

You're absolutely right — trust and verifiability are critical when grounding AI responses, especially for external content like news. And yes, while it may seem like a design limitation at first, the good news is:

Grounding with Bing Search does retrieve the actual article URLs — they’re just not shown in the default output.

To ensure the responses aren't hallucinated and are fully traceable, you can access the real URLs from the contentUrl field in the returned documents from the Bing Grounding tool.

Here’s what to do:

·       Use retrieval_tool.call_retrieve("your query") to perform the search.

·       Loop through the response["results"].

·       Extract and display the document["contentUrl"] field — that’s the actual article link.

By doing this, you can include real, verifiable links in the output, which solves the concern around hallucinations and missing citations — similar to what Copilot provides.

Thanks! 

Hi Dan Fay,

Following up to see if the above suggestion was helpful. And, if you have any further query do let me know.

Thank you!

Hi Prashanth Veeragoni -

I had some challenges with your suggestion as I wasn't able to figure out where the retrieval_tool.call_retrieve call was documented or any examples of its use. I did do some testing with the run_step, but that didn't seem to give me the results from the Bing_grounding tool. In looking at the documentation, it looks like RunStepBingGroundingToolCall would be the right way to go, but there isn't any example code.

I've ended up looking to the annotations to get the full urls - This sample code (sample_agents_bing_grounding.py) helped, especially this part.

    # Print the Agent's response message with optional citation
    response_message = project_client.agents.list_messages(thread_id=thread.id).get_last_message_by_role(
        MessageRole.AGENT
    )
    if response_message:
        for text_message in response_message.text_messages:
            print(f"Agent response: {text_message.text.value}")
        for annotation in response_message.url_citation_annotations:
            print(f"URL Citation: [{annotation.url_citation.title}]({annotation.url_citation.url})")

What's frustrating is that the documentation (How to display Grounding with Bing Search results) says

According to Grounding with Bing's terms of use and use and display requirements, you need to display both website URLs and Bing search query URLs in your custom interface. You can find website URLs through annotations parameter in API response and Bing search query URLs through runstep details.

Yet there aren't any samples available that show it. Also, it would be useful if the documentation specifically mentioned you shouldn't request the LLM to include URLs in the results, as they won't be valid URLs.