On 28 October, Alphabet reported third-quarter revenue up 25% to $127.6 billion . Google Search & other grew 12% to $63.35 billion. Google Cloud grew 103% to $30.7 billion .
Search revenue fell short of a $64.96 billion analyst estimate, CNBC reported . Google’s own answer, in the same results: “our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it’s been in the last five years,” said CEO Sundar Pichai, crediting its AI investments . The fastest revenue growth came from the business that sells AI, not the one that sells search ads .
Questions this article answers
SAQ: the questions you should be asking (and nobody is)
- If someone asked an AI assistant for a clinic like ours nearby, would we be named?
- Is the information an AI would read about us, hours, services, location, written down and current?
- How much of our budget goes to search ads versus being findable in answers?
- When did we last check what AI tools say about us?
Your patients stopped Googling you. Where are they asking now?
The video for this article is in production.
Is Google search dying?
No, not on these numbers. Search revenue still grew, and Alphabet said its year-over-year search query growth rate was the highest in five years . Sundar Pichai credited AI features for that growth .
But search is changing shape. Pichai described “one seamless experience across AI Overviews, AI Mode, and traditional Search” and added: “Queries in AI Mode are on average three times longer than traditional searches, and one in five AI Mode searches globally use voice, images, or documents.” People are not only typing keywords. They are asking full questions and getting answers back.
Where the clicks went
When an AI summary appears, people click less. Pew Research Center, studying US adults on Google, found that users who did not see an AI summary clicked a search result nearly twice as often: “Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits)” .
People also ask AI tools directly. A vendor survey by BrightLocal, which sells local-marketing software, reported “45% consumers using AI tools for local business recommendations” .
Google’s own documentation says: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary” The same page lists fundamentals such as keeping important content available in text and keeping Business Profile information up to date .
The business lesson
Sources
Sources are listed in their original language.
- 1Alphabet Inc., “Alphabet Announces Third Quarter 2026 Results,” Exhibit 99.1, 28 October 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000080/googexhibit991q32026.htm
- 2CNBC, “Alphabet (GOOGL) earnings Q3 2026,” 28 October 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/28/alphabet-googl-earnings-q3-2026.html
- 3Google, Sundar Pichai, “Q3 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO,” October 2026. https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q3-2026/
- 4Pew Research Center, Athena Chapekis and Anna Lieb, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results,” 22 July 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/
- 5Google Search Central, “AI features and your website,” documentation (accessed 30 October 2026). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
- 6BrightLocal (vendor survey), Rosie Murphy, “Nearly Half of Consumers are Asking AI for Business Recommendations,” 10 March 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/lcrs-ai-trust/