Alphabet’s Google Search & other revenue reached $63.35 billion in Q3 2026, up 12% from a year earlier, the company reported on October 28.

The annual growth rate slowed from 17% in Q2, although the quarterly total edged up from $63.271 billion.

The big change

  • Search revenue grew at a slower annual rate; the results do not explain why.
  • Advertisers need placement-level results to assess performance. A search alone is neither a paid impression nor a sale.
  • More searches need not mean more visits to publishers. Independent research found different click patterns on pages with AI summaries, although the comparison cannot establish cause.

Revenue and queries measure different things

Q3’s year-earlier baseline was $56.567 billion; Q2’s was $54.190 billion. Each annual rate uses its own baseline. The increase between Q2 and Q3 2026 was $79 million, about 0.1%.

Chief executive Sundar Pichai said AI investment drove overall and commercial query growth, and the year-over-year Search query growth rate was the highest in five years. Alphabet’s release gives neither the rate nor the query count.

The reported Search & other line does not separate AI formats, ad opportunities or prices. It cannot show how much AI affected revenue or explain the slowdown.

For an advertiser, a query represents a search, not a paid impression or a sale. Advertising results depend on which searches show an ad and what happens after it appears. A company-wide revenue total and an unspecified query growth rate cannot tell an individual advertiser how an AI placement performs.

Google has separately expanded ads in AI Mode, including follow-up queries, as BIG CHANGE reported.

What clicks to publishers show

An independent Pew Research Center analysis tracked 900 US adults’ browsing in March 2025. Traditional result links were clicked on 8% of visits to pages with an AI summary, versus 15% without one. Pew reconstructed search results in April, and the searches differed between groups. This observational comparison cannot establish that summaries caused the gap or describe Google’s global traffic in Q3 2026.

BIG CHANGE reviewed Alphabet’s two earnings releases and Pew’s published research.