Copilot Search Delivers Even More Intelligence?

Prior to Microsoft’s Copilot launch in March 2023, search was simple. Google dominated and had educated people into performing keyword-based searches to find information. Today, the situation isn’t quite so straightforward. AI-generated executive summaries are the norm for Google and other search engines. Keyword-based searching is very different now.

Copilot came with promise of radically better search. I think Microsoft 365 Copilot has lived up to this promise, but only for Graph-based searches for documents, messages, and email, Web-based searches depend on Bing, and that dependency makes web results less than spectacularly wonderful. Some thought that semantic search would make a big difference, but given that Copilot functions without semantic search, its influence is marginal at best.

Copilot Search Mark 2

Microsoft has a reputation for getting things right on the second or third attempt, which brings us to the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot search, “a new AI-powered, enterprise-grade search experience” for tenants with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. The technology is described in message center notification MC1108844 (3 July 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 490778). The new search is available in targeted release tenants now and is scheduled for general availability starting in mid-July 2025.

According to Microsoft, “Copilot Search leverages Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors to index content across Microsoft 365 and third-party apps. It interprets user context, natural language, behavioral signals, and organizational relationships to deliver highly personalized, context-aware answers to complex queries.” That’s quite a mouthful. After using the new search for several days, it reminds me of the Microsoft Search in Bing feature (retired in March 2025) with a hint of Delve, all wrapped up with BizChat. Microsoft says that the integration with BizChat enables users to move seamlessly from search to task execution.

Copilot Search in Action

After reading the documentation, I headed to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and selected the Search option, making sure that the option to use the new search was selected. I’ve written extensively about Entra ID license management, so proceeded to see what Copilot Search could find. Figure 1 shows the results. Instead of a simple list of results with the ability to filter by type (files, sites, people, messages, and so on), Copilot Search presents what Microsoft considers to be a more intelligent view, including an extract from the Copilot chat response to the question posed in the search. The full chat response is available by clicking the Continue reading button. In essence, you then participate in a full-blown conversation with Copilot.

The Modified drop-down offers filters for the past 24 hours, past week, past month, and past year. Under Results, you can refine the results based on items found in SharePoint Online, the web (other sites), Outlook mail, and Teams messages (not shown in Figure 1). Loop workspaces and pages are also scanned by search and are included in SharePoint results rather than having their own type.

The web results are generated from Bing, so the normal caveat applies to the accuracy and usefulness of Bing. Microsoft documentation is heavily favored by Bing, so it’s of no surprise that the top two results listed come from that source. Better results are generated if you include a target website address to search. For example, “What Practical365.com articles cover the topic of Entra ID license management”

Like BizChat, the DLP policy for Copilot stops Office documents and PDF files assigned specific sensitivity labels turning up in search results.

Pity About Bing, but Copilot Search Excels with Graph Searches

Like any search, the new Copilot search takes some getting used to before it becomes an effective and efficient tool in user hands. The dependency on Bing weakens the ability of Copilot search to beat Google or other search engines, but the ability to find items in Graph-grounded searches is unmatched. That, and the smooth integration with BizChat and the ability to save output in Copilot pages will likely please people enough to drive usage.

Insight like this doesn’t come easily. You’ve got to know the technology and understand how to look behind the scenes. Benefit from the knowledge and experience of the Office 365 for IT Pros team by subscribing to the best eBook covering Office 365 and the wider Microsoft 365 ecosystem.