Alphabet Q3 2026: Search Revenue Up 12%, Query Growth at a Five-Year High

Alphabet and Microsoft both reported results for the quarter to 30 September 2026 on 28 October. For anyone working in search, the headline from Alphabet's earnings release is that Search is still growing, despite AI answers:

Google Services revenues increased 11% to $96.3 billion, led by 12% growth in Google Search & other with the year-over-year Search query growth rate the highest it has been in the last five years.

Alphabet's advertising numbers

All figures are in US dollars, from the release's revenue table, comparing Q3 2026 with Q3 2025.

Line	Q3 2025	Q3 2026	Change
Google Search & other	$56.6bn	$63.4bn	+12.0%
YouTube ads	$10.3bn	$11.2bn	+9.2%
Google Network	$7.4bn	$7.5bn	+1.4%
Google advertising total	$74.2bn	$82.0bn	+10.6%
Google Cloud	$15.2bn	$30.7bn	+103%
Alphabet total revenue	$102.3bn	$127.6bn	+24.7%

Total traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the money Google pays partners such as Apple and Android manufacturers to be the default search engine, rose from $14.9bn to $16.4bn.

What Sundar Pichai said about Search

The CEO's statement in the release links AI directly to query growth:

Our AI investments are driving overall Search query growth, including commercial queries. In fact, our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it's been in the last five years.

Two things stand out for SEOs:

1. "Including commercial queries." A common worry has been that AI Overviews and AI Mode would mostly attract informational queries and leave commercial ones unchanged. Google is saying commercial query volume is growing too. Commercial queries are the ones ads monetise, so Google has a strong interest in highlighting this, but it is a direct statement in a regulatory filing.
2. More queries don't mean more clicks. The release reports query growth, not click-through to websites. If more searches are answered inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, query volume can rise while clicks to sites stay flat or fall. That fits what many sites see in Search Console: impressions holding up or rising while clicks fall.

The release also says the Gemini app has reached one billion users, and that Gemini 4 Argon and Carbon are Google's current frontier models.

The Network keeps shrinking in relative terms

Google Network revenue, which comes from ads Google places on other sites through AdSense, AdMob and Ad Manager, grew just 1.4%. Search grew 12%. The gap has been widening for several years and continued this quarter. For publishers relying on AdSense, Google's own ad growth is coming from its own properties, not the open web.

Microsoft: search advertising up 12%

Microsoft's first-quarter press release for fiscal year 2027 reported total revenue of $92.3bn, up 19%, and:

Search and advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12%

The metric is Microsoft's search advertising, including Bing, net of what it pays partners. Including TAC, Microsoft's search and advertising revenue was $6.55bn, compared with $5.94bn a year earlier.

Microsoft's search and advertising revenue is about a tenth of Google Search & other revenue, but it is growing at a similar rate. For UK advertisers that's a reason to keep testing Microsoft Advertising, where costs per click are often lower. We cover both platforms in our PPC management service.

What this means for your strategy

• Search demand isn't disappearing. Both companies report search advertising growing at double digits. Budgets moved out of search because "AI is replacing Google" aren't supported by these numbers.
• The fight is over clicks, not queries. Query growth with AI answers on top means fewer clicks per query for many informational searches. Measure organic success with conversions and revenue, not just traffic.
• AI visibility is becoming part of SEO. If Google's growth comes from AI-assisted searches, being cited in those answers matters. That's the focus of our AI search optimisation work.

Sources

• Alphabet Inc.: Alphabet Announces Third Quarter 2026 Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, SEC EDGAR) (28 October 2026)
• Microsoft: Microsoft Announces First Quarter Results (FY27 Q1) (28 October 2026)