How to Add a Public Website as a Knowledge Source in Copilot Studio

Our readers kept emailing the same kind of question: where’s the tutorial for this, and what does Microsoft say about that? The answers already lived on two public sites, so I built a small help agent that reads them for us.

The finished agent answers from SPGuides and the Copilot Studio documentation only, and every answer comes back with clickable references to the pages it used. No connectors, no authentication, and no files to upload.

In this tutorial, we’ll add a public website as a knowledge source in Copilot Studio step by step. We’ll create a standard agent, add two websites with good descriptions, turn off Web Search, and test which pages the agent actually used.

Here’s what we’re building. I asked the test agent a real question on 10/23/2026, and it answered with two numbered references:

Before You Start

You need access to Copilot Studio in an environment where you can create agents. If you’re still deciding between products, my comparison of Microsoft 365 Copilot vs Copilot Studio explains where each one fits.

Here are the two knowledge sources we’ll add. Write the description now, because the agent reads it to decide which source to search.

Name	Public website link	Description
SPGuides tutorials	https://www.spguides.com/	Step-by-step SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate and Copilot Studio tutorials
Copilot Studio docs	https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/	Official Microsoft documentation for Copilot Studio features, limits and settings

Check each URL against Microsoft’s rules first. A link that breaks one of them doesn’t fail loudly; the agent just returns nothing from it.

Rule	What it means for your link
Up to two levels deep	Two path segments after the domain work; a third segment doesn’t. A trailing slash is fine.
Everything below is included	www.spguides.com/power-apps also covers pages under it, but not www.spguides.com/spfx.
Subdomains	spguides.com covers www.spguides.com and any other subdomain; www.spguides.com doesn’t cover the others.
Public and indexed by Bing	Pages behind a sign-in, including SharePoint sites and wikis, aren’t supported.
No redirects to another site	If the URL redirects to a different top-level site, neither site returns content.
How many	25 websites with generative orchestration, 4 with classic orchestration.

Also skip forums, social networks and search engine URLs such as bing.com. Microsoft warns they produce irrelevant answers or more rejected answers.

Step 1: Create a Standard Agent

The goal here is an empty agent we can attach knowledge to. Copilot Studio now offers more than one agent type, so pick carefully.

1. Sign in to Copilot Studio and open Agents.
2. Open the dropdown next to New agent.
3. Under Other ways to build, select Agent (Standard), “Create an agent with predefined rules and flows.”

The same menu shows Agent (GitHub Copilot) near the top. Microsoft describes that type as built for reasoning-heavy, multistep work, while the standard type follows the rules you define. For a predictable help agent, standard is the better fit.

1. In the Name your agent dialog, type SPGuides Help Agent.
2. Leave Agent settings (Optional) as they are and select Create.

For a longer walk-through of the other create options, see how to create a new agent using Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Checkpoint: A banner says the feature isn’t available until the agent finishes setting up. In my tenant it switched to “Your agent has been provisioned.” after about 40 seconds, with Overview, Knowledge, Tools, Agents, Topics and Activity tabs.

Step 2: Open Add Knowledge and Pick Public Websites

Next we open the knowledge picker. You can start it from the Overview page too, but the Knowledge tab shows the full list afterward.

1. Select the Knowledge tab.
2. On the empty Add a knowledge source page, select Add knowledge.

The Add knowledge dialog opens with an Upload file area at the top and featured sources below it: Public websites, SharePoint, Azure AI Search, Dataverse, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Azure SQL.

Select Public websites. If your content sits in SharePoint instead, use that tile; it signs users in and respects their permissions. I show that setup in how to use a SharePoint list as knowledge.

Step 3: Add the Website Links and Descriptions

Now we paste both URLs and give each one a name and description the agent can understand.

1. Paste https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/ into the Public website link box and select Add.
2. Change Name from the URL to Copilot Studio docs.
3. Replace the default Description (“This knowledge source searches information on the web found in …”) with the text from the table above.
4. Repeat for https://www.spguides.com/ with the name SPGuides tutorials.
5. Select Add to agent.

Read the footer note before you click. It says the source uses Grounding with Bing Search and Grounding with Bing Custom Search, and that data may flow outside your organization’s compliance boundary. Share that with your compliance team if it matters.

The description isn’t decoration. With generative orchestration, the agent uses it to pick a source, so a specific line beats the default. Pair it with clear agent instructions and conversation starters that tell the agent to cite pages.

Checkpoint: The Knowledge list shows both rows with Type Public website and Usage General. Both reached Status Ready within seconds, since the agent searches Bing when someone asks, not ahead of time.

You can also put a variable in the link, such as https://www.spguides.com/{Topic}, through the {x} picker. It must resolve to a valid public URL, and the two-level depth rule still applies.

Step 4: Turn Off Web Search to Stay on Your Sites

This is the step most tutorials miss. On my new agent, Web Search was already Enabled, which lets it search every public site Bing has indexed.

1. Open the Overview tab and scroll to the Knowledge card.
2. Find Web Search, “Enable your agent to search all public websites.”
3. Switch it to Disabled.

Microsoft says Web Search results are interleaved with results from your own public website sources, so leaving it on mixes in other sites. The same switch appears as Use information from the web on the agent’s Generative AI settings page. To tighten safety too, read how to set up content moderation in Copilot Studio.

On that settings page you’ll also find Allow ungrounded responses. Turn it off and the agent blocks any answer that didn’t use a knowledge source or tool. I didn’t change it for this build.

Checkpoint: The Knowledge card lists Copilot Studio docs and SPGuides tutorials as Ready, and Web Search reads Disabled.

Test the Agent and Check Its Sources

Open the test pane and ask something one of your sites answers. I asked: “How do I add a SharePoint list as knowledge in Copilot Studio?”

The activity map shows a Search sources step that only makers can see. Expand it to watch three things happen:

1. Refining knowledge query: the agent rewrote my question into a fuller search query.
2. Summarized coverage analysis: the pages it found, including Microsoft’s SharePoint knowledge article and the SPGuides home page.
3. Referenced sources: Copilot Studio docs and SPGuides tutorials, our two sources.

The execution summary read “knowledge retrieval completed with status Completed in 2.12s.” The default model was GPT Chat Latest; you can choose a different AI model if answers feel thin.

Checkpoint: The answer, shown at the top of this post, cited 2 references, both Microsoft Learn pages, and mentioned you can select up to 10 lists at a time. Nothing came from sites outside our two sources.

Make It Production-Ready

• Budget for Copilot Credits. Each generative answer costs 2 Copilot Credits. Employees with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license using the agent signed in aren’t charged, within fair-use limits.
• Ask for citations. With ungrounded responses off, an answer without an in-text citation is withheld. An instruction like “Always include an in-text citation” makes answers more consistent.
• Keep questions short. The whole Bing request can’t exceed 2,048 characters, so long questions or long conversations can skip the search.
• Move it with a solution. Build in a Copilot Studio solution so you can export it to test and production.
• Publish where people work. Add a channel, such as a live or demo website or Teams.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
The agent says it can’t find an answer	Confirm the page is public and indexed by Bing, the URL is at most two levels deep, and it doesn’t redirect to another site.
Answers cite sites you never added	Web Search is on. Disable it on the Overview page or turn off Use information from the web.
An answer appears, then later doesn’t	With ungrounded responses off, uncited answers are withheld. Add a citation instruction.
Long or multi-turn questions return nothing	The Bing request hit 2,048 characters. Start a new test session and ask a shorter question.
Your SharePoint site link returns nothing	SharePoint needs a sign-in. Add it with the SharePoint knowledge source instead.

If the test pane works but your published web chat asks people to sign in, that’s an authentication setting, not knowledge. See the demo website authentication error fix.

Where to Take It Next

• Add internal content beside the websites by learning to add Copilot Studio knowledge files using Power Automate.
• Split big topics across specialists when you create a multi-agent setup in Copilot Studio.
• Browse every build in our Copilot Studio tutorials.

If you’re building more agents this month, these are worth a look:

• Create Autonomous Agents in Copilot Studio
• Create Custom Topic in Microsoft Copilot Studio [2 Easy Methods]
• Change Copilot Studio Agent Welcome Message
• How to Copy Agent Builder Agent to Copilot Studio?

Frequently Asked Questions