Google Search sales gain just $79m on Q2 as query growth hits 5-year high

On October 28, 2026, Alphabet reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $127.6 billion, up 25% from a year earlier, while the advertising businesses that marketers pay for grew at less than half that rate. Google Search & other revenue rose 12% to $63.35 billion, its slowest growth since the second quarter of 2025, even as Alphabet said its year-over-year Search query growth rate was the highest in five years. Measured against the previous quarter, Search revenue rose by just $79 million. YouTube ads grew 9% to $11.21 billion, Google Network rose 1% to $7.46 billion, and Google Cloud more than doubled to $30.71 billion, which cut advertising's share of Alphabet's revenue to 64.3% from 72.5% a year earlier. Alphabet published no paid click or cost-per-click figures.

In Short

Google's owner, Alphabet, made $127.6 billion in three months, a quarter more than a year ago, but most of that extra money came from selling cloud computing, AI services and AI chips to other companies, not from ads. The number of Google searches grew faster than at any time in five years, yet the money Google made from search ads grew by only 12%, and it barely changed from the three months before. For advertisers and publishers, that gap between more searches and slower search revenue is the number to watch, because Google did not say how many ads were clicked or what each click cost.

The quarter in numbers

Alphabet published its results on October 28, 2026, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, together with an earnings presentation and a call with analysts at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time, streamed on YouTube. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and Alphabet, posted an edited transcript of his prepared remarks on Google's blog. All figures below come from those documents unless attributed to earlier PPC Land coverage or labelled as PPC Land's calculation.

Revenue reached $127,577 million, against $102,346 million in the third quarter of 2025. That is 25% growth, and 25% in constant currency as well, because a foreign exchange headwind of $702 million was offset by $194 million of hedging gains. A year earlier, growth was 16% as reported and 15% in constant currency. Against the second quarter of 2026, revenue rose 6%, or 7% excluding currency effects. Alphabet described it as the 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth.

"We had a strong quarter and are now on a half-trillion dollar revenue run rate," Pichai said in the release. Multiplying the quarter's revenue by four gives about $510 billion, PPC Land's calculation.

Operating income rose 30% to $40,576 million, and the operating margin was 31.8%, up from 30.5%. Net income available to common stockholders fell 25% to $26,170 million, and diluted earnings per share fell 26% to $2.12. The decline came from below the operating line: other income swung from a gain of $12,759 million to a loss of $8,221 million, driven by an $8,664 million loss on equity securities. According to the release, that loss reduced net income by $6.7 billion and diluted earnings per share by $0.55. The second quarter had run the other way, with a $77.1 billion equity gain that pushed net income to $112.1 billion in July.

The advertising lines, quarter by quarter

The table below sets the October 28 figures against the quarters PPC Land covered at the time of each release. Growth rates are year over year. The third quarter of 2026 comes from the October 28 release; the other columns come from PPC Land's report on the third quarter of 2025, its report on the first quarter of 2026 and its report on the second quarter of 2026, with capital expenditure and free cash flow taken from Alphabet's own five-quarter reconciliation.

The advertising share for the first and second quarters of 2026 is PPC Land's calculation from the reported advertising and total revenue figures.

Search: record query growth, slower revenue

Google Search & other revenue was $63,350 million, up from $56,567 million a year earlier. Growth of 12% compares with 15% in the third quarter of 2025, 19% in the first quarter of 2026 and 17% in the second. The last time PPC Land recorded a rate this low was the second quarter of 2025, when Search revenue rose 12% to $54.2 billion.

Alphabet's explanation centres on usage rather than money. "Our AI investments are driving overall Search query growth, including commercial queries," Pichai said in the release. "In fact, our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it's been in the last five years." The release repeats the claim in its summary, stating that Search & other was led by "the year-over-year Search query growth rate the highest it has been in the last five years." Neither document gives a query count or a growth percentage.

The query narrative is not new. In July 2025, Google said AI Overviews were driving over 10% more queries for the query types that show them. In February, management said Search usage in the fourth quarter of 2025 was the highest ever and that AI features were driving growth in overall queries, including commercial ones. In July, Search usage hit an all-time high during the World Cup. Across those five quarters, the usage claims have grown stronger, while revenue growth has moved from 12% up to 19% and back down to 12%.

A flat quarter in dollars

The sequential comparison is starker than the annual one. Search & other revenue was $63,271 million in the second quarter and $63,350 million in the third, a rise of $79 million, or 0.1%, PPC Land's calculation. In 2025, the same seasonal step from the second to the third quarter added $2,377 million, or 4.4%.

There are explanations Alphabet set out in advance. When it reported the second quarter in July, chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi warned that the third quarter would begin lapping an acceleration in Search performance that started in the third quarter of 2025, and flagged a foreign exchange headwind after a one-point tailwind in the second quarter. Both materialised. Search & other had grown 15% in the comparison quarter, and currency movements cut $702 million from consolidated revenue this quarter. The second quarter also carried the World Cup, with YouTube reporting more than 1.7 billion unique viewers of tournament content at the time.

Those factors help explain a slower annual rate. They do not, on their own, explain why a business that Alphabet says is seeing its fastest query growth in five years earned almost the same amount from Search in the third quarter as in the second. So where is the revenue from the extra queries? Alphabet's documents do not address that point.

What Pichai said about monetization

Pichai's prepared remarks contain one sentence on how Google intends to make money from AI in Search, and it puts monetization second. "Search is bringing the benefits of AI to more people than any other product in the world. Just like our shift to mobile over a decade ago, we are focused on building the best Search user experience, followed by monetization."

The comparison carries history for advertisers. During the move to smartphones in the early 2010s, Google reported year-over-year declines in average cost-per-click for many consecutive quarters as searches shifted to mobile screens, where ads were priced lower. Pichai did not say how long the current phase might last or what "followed by monetization" would involve.

Across the remarks, which run to roughly 1,000 words, Pichai did not use the words "advertising" or "advertisers." Ads appear once, as a team name: "teams across Chrome, Ads, and Search have used Argon to write and optimize code much faster, shipping 35% more code with 30% fewer errors."

No paid clicks, no cost-per-click

Alphabet's earnings release does not publish paid clicks or cost-per-click for Google properties, and the earnings presentation does not include them either. The release states that additional information will be set out in the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026.

Without those figures, the split between volume and price in the $6.8 billion annual increase in Search revenue cannot be calculated from the earnings documents. Advertiser-side data PPC Land has reported points in several directions. WordStream's 2026 benchmarks put the median US cost-per-click at $5.42, roughly 3% higher than a year earlier, across 13,474 search campaigns. A PPC Land analysis published on October 10 traced bidding changes, defaults and measurement choices through 2026, including Google's August 17 change that pulls budget-capped campaigns beating their targets back toward those targets, a 46% fall in Performance Max return on ad spend in Channable's dataset, and smec's finding that AI Max had broadened about 29% of exact match impressions by July 2026.

AI Mode and AI Overviews

Pichai described one Search product spanning the old and new interfaces. "We are building one seamless experience across AI Overviews, AI Mode, and traditional Search," he said. "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. We've now crossed over 50 billion visual searches per month."

Two of those figures can be compared with earlier disclosures. In February, Alphabet said AI Mode queries were about three times longer than traditional searches and nearly one in six used non-text formats such as voice or images. The length figure is unchanged; the share of non-text queries has risen to one in five, though the new definition also counts documents.

The earnings documents give no user count for AI Mode or AI Overviews. A year ago, Alphabet reported more than 2 billion monthly users for AI Overviews and 75 million daily users for AI Mode. In May, Google said AI Mode had passed 1 billion monthly active users, three months after it formally announced shopping ads in AI Mode on February 11. Nor do the earnings documents update the AI Max figure from July, when Alphabet said half a million advertisers were using it.

YouTube: 9% ad growth

YouTube ads revenue was $11,207 million, up 9.2% from $10,261 million. That compares with growth of 15% a year earlier, 11% in the first quarter of 2026 and 13% in the second. Against the second quarter, YouTube ads rose $152 million, or 1.4%, PPC Land's calculation. In 2025, the second-to-third-quarter step was 4.7%.

As with Search, the second quarter had the World Cup. Alphabet's documents do not attribute the third-quarter rate to any factor.

Pichai's remarks focused on viewing rather than ads. YouTube "continues to lead in the living room as the number-one streaming platform in the U.S. in terms of watch time," he said. Independent data supports the scale of viewing: in Nielsen's August Gauge, released on October 22, YouTube reached a record 15.8% of US TV time while total TV usage fell 4.4%.

The subscription side grew faster than ads. Google subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue, which includes YouTube Music and Premium, YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket, rose 11% to $14,290 million, after 15% growth in the second quarter. Alphabet said it had passed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials.

Pichai also referred to Made on YouTube on September 23, where YouTube presented more than 30 products and features. "One great example is custom feeds, where you can simply pick a topic you love and get a tailored video home feed based on that topic," he said. As rolled out on October 22, custom feeds are built from a typed prompt and capped at three per account, or eight for Premium members, for signed-in US viewers using English. When YouTube first tested the feature in May, it said views from a custom feed count toward creator watch time and monetization in the same way as Home feed views.

Google Network returns to growth

Google Network revenue, which comes from ads Google places on partner websites and apps, was $7,455 million, up 1.4% from $7,354 million. Against the second quarter's $7,303 million, it rose $152 million, or 2.1%. PPC Land's coverage had recorded year-over-year declines in each quarter it reported since mid-2025: 3% in the third quarter of 2025, 4% in the first quarter of 2026 and 1% in the second.

The increase is small, and Network's weight inside Google's advertising business continued to shrink. It accounted for 9.1% of Google advertising revenue, down from 9.9% a year earlier, PPC Land's calculation. Alphabet's release does not explain the change. It does not say whether it came from more impressions on partner sites, higher prices, AdMob in apps, or Ad Manager.

What publishers face

For publishers, Network revenue is only part of the relationship with Google; organic traffic is the larger one. Chartbeat's third-quarter data, published on October 15, showed search falling to 12% of North American publisher pageviews, down from 21% a year earlier. A randomized study of 1,065 US desktop Chrome users by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon found that AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8%. Ahrefs' analysis of 300,000 keywords linked AI Overviews to a 58% lower click-through rate for top-ranking pages, a correlation rather than a demonstrated cause, while Google's Nick Fox said in July that AI features in Search send billions of clicks to websites every week.

Google has started paying some sites directly. In September, The Information reported that Google pays about 100 publishers through an AI contribution pilot when their pages shape AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini answers, with some small sites receiving less than $1,000 over several months. The earnings documents do not mention the programme or publishers.

The legal framework for Network's ad tech is also changing. On September 2, Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected a forced sale of AdX and instead ordered a six-year worldwide set of behavioural remedies, including real-time AdX bids through Prebid and a ban on reintroducing First Look and Last Look. Google committed to 12 to 15 months for the DFP-Prebid integration, and the remedies were not yet in force during the quarter. The earnings documents do not refer to the case.

Traffic acquisition costs

Total traffic acquisition costs, the payments Google makes to distribution partners such as browser and device makers and to Network publishers, rose 10% to $16,366 million. That equals 19.96% of Google advertising revenue, against 20.05% a year earlier, PPC Land's calculation; PPC Land reported the year-earlier ratio as 20.1%. In the second quarter, TAC was $16.2 billion, also up 10%.

The release gives total TAC only. It does not split the figure between distribution partners and Network partners, so the share of Network revenue passed to publishers cannot be calculated from it.

Advertising's shrinking share of Alphabet

Google advertising revenue, the sum of Search, YouTube and Network, rose 10.6% to $82,012 million. It accounted for 64.3% of Alphabet's revenue, down from 72.5% in the third quarter of 2025 and 68.1% in the second quarter of 2026, PPC Land's calculation.

The shift comes from Cloud. Of the $25,231 million increase in total revenue, Google Cloud contributed $15,552 million, or 62%, and advertising contributed $7,830 million, or 31%, PPC Land's calculation. A year ago, Cloud accounted for 14.8% of Alphabet's revenue. It now accounts for 24.1%.

Cloud and TPU systems

Google Cloud revenue rose 103% to $30,709 million, following 82% growth in the second quarter and 63% in the first. Cloud operating income rose from $3,594 million to $11,121 million, and its operating margin from 23.7% to 36.2%. Cloud operating income now equals about 28% of the Google Services operating income of $39,157 million.

Hardware is part of that growth. The release describes Google Cloud as generating "product revenues primarily from the sale of TPU systems," Google's own AI chips sold as complete systems, and says "TPU systems sales were also a meaningful contributor to revenue growth." It does not disclose how much. Alphabet's presentation describes the stack it now sells: trays with four proprietary chips on one liquid-cooled board, racks of 16 TPU machines with battery backup, and pods of 144 TPU racks with three optical switch racks, supported by JAX, PyTorch, the XLA compiler, and the vLLM and SGLang serving engines. Inventory on the balance sheet rose to $13,308 million at September 30 from $2,439 million at the end of 2025; the release does not explain the increase.

"We are working hard to bring more capacity online to meet this long-term demand," Pichai said. "At the same time, we're seeing strong demand for our TPU systems across a wide range of customers, and we expect that to continue as we scale."

Geography

US revenue rose 39% to $67,681 million and 11% against the second quarter. EMEA grew 9% to $32,695 million, or 10% in constant currency; APAC grew 12% to $19,906 million, or 15% in constant currency; and Other Americas grew 17% to $7,101 million. In July, PPC Land reported US growth of 32% and EMEA growth of 15%.

The United States supplied $18,923 million of the $24,830 million increase in revenue excluding hedging, or 76%, PPC Land's calculation. Alphabet does not split its geographic figures by segment, so the documents do not show how much of the US jump came from Cloud and TPU systems and how much from advertising.

Margins, AI costs and headcount

The consolidated operating margin of 31.8% compares with 30.5% a year earlier, but the year-earlier quarter carried a $3.5 billion European Commission fine. Excluding it, PPC Land reported a margin of 33.9% for the third quarter of 2025. Within 2026, the margin has declined each quarter: 36.1% in the first quarter, 34% in the second and 31.8% in the third.

Google Services, the segment that holds Search, YouTube and Network, reported operating income of $39,157 million and a margin of 40.7%, up from 38.5% a year earlier. In the second quarter, Services operating income was $39.5 billion at a 41.8% margin, so Services profit fell slightly from the second to the third quarter.

The fastest-growing cost line sits outside the segments. "Alphabet-level activities," which the release says primarily reflect expenses related to shared AI research and development, cost $7,655 million, up 71% from $4,467 million. Research and development spending across the company rose 36% to $20,640 million. Depreciation of property and equipment rose 49% to $8,369 million, and other cost of revenues, excluding TAC, rose 32% to $35,053 million. Interest expense rose to $967 million from $143 million.

General and administrative costs fell 17% to $6,138 million, a decline that reflects the year-earlier fine. Sales and marketing rose 22% to $8,804 million. Alphabet ended the quarter with 204,757 employees, 14,590 more than a year earlier, an increase of 7.7%.

Capital expenditure, cash flow and funding

Purchases of property and equipment reached $51,355 million, up 114% and the highest of the five quarters Alphabet charted, each above the one before: $23,953 million in the third quarter of 2025, $27,851 million in the fourth, $35,674 million in the first quarter of 2026 and $44,924 million in the second. Spending for the first nine months of 2026 totals $131,953 million.

In July, Alphabet raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $195 billion to $205 billion, from $180 billion to $190 billion. In February, the range had been $175 billion to $185 billion. Meeting the July range would require fourth-quarter spending of $63.0 billion to $73.0 billion, PPC Land's calculation. The release, presentation and Pichai's published remarks contain no updated guidance.

Operating cash flow fell 13% to $42,290 million. After capital expenditure, free cash flow was negative $9,065 million, the second consecutive negative quarter after negative $5.9 billion in the second quarter. Trailing twelve-month free cash flow fell to $19,747 million from $73,552 million a year earlier, a drop of 73%.

Debt, share sales and no buybacks

The gap is being filled with borrowing and new shares. In June, Alphabet announced about $85 billion of equity financing, including a $40 billion at-the-market programme expected to start in the third quarter. During the quarter it issued 12 million Class A shares for net proceeds of $4.3 billion and 24 million Class C shares for $8.1 billion, leaving $27.6 billion available under the programme. It also issued senior unsecured notes for net proceeds of $28.7 billion.

Long-term debt stood at $125,102 million at September 30, against $46,547 million at the end of 2025 and $98.2 billion at the end of June. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $265,098 million. The balance sheet also carries $18,023 million of 6.25% mandatory convertible preferred stock issued this year, on which the board declared a quarterly dividend of $15.63 per share, payable on November 15 to holders of record on November 1. The common dividend of $0.22 per share is payable on December 14 to holders of record on December 7.

Alphabet repurchased no shares in the quarter, against $11,504 million a year earlier, and none in the first nine months of 2026, against $39,810 million in the same period of 2025. Class A, B and C shares outstanding rose to 12,294 million from 12,088 million at the end of 2025.

Gemini, tokens and agents

The Gemini app passed one billion users, according to the release, and the earnings presentation describes the figure as more than one billion monthly active users. That compares with 950 million in July, 750 million in February and 650 million a year ago.

Alphabet said its first-party model APIs process nearly 32 billion tokens per minute, 40% more than in the second quarter and more than four times the level of a year earlier. The figures PPC Land reported along the way were 7 billion per minute in the third quarter of 2025, 16 billion in the first quarter of 2026 and 22 billion in the second.

Argon, Carbon and Genie 4

Gemini 4 Argon, released on October 13, accounts for part of that. On developer platforms, Pichai said, "usage in the first week ramped up three-and-a-half times faster than Gemini 3, even with capacity constraints." In a podcast interview on October 21, he said Argon processed almost 25 trillion tokens in its first 72 hours and that Google remained short of compute.

On October 28, Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, a frontier model that Pichai called "our strongest frontier model, with state-of-the-art cybersecurity and long horizon capabilities." He said it ranks first on the recently updated Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 59. Access is restricted for now. "We're rolling Carbon out first to a subset of trusted cyber defenders before we expand access, and it's being tested by the U.S. government," Pichai said. Carbon arrived a day after Genie 4, a world model that simulates interactive environments with native audio in real time, announced on October 27.

Alphabet's presentation lists the releases of the quarter from July to October: Gemini 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash Cyber, Gemini 3.7 Flash, Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, Omni 1.1 Flash, Lyria 3.5, Gemini 3.8 Live and Extended Thinking, Nano Banana 2.1, and the two Gemini 4 models.

Pichai also said that "AI is helping us increase our training and launch velocity," adding: "I would expect the next 12 months to see continued acceleration because of RSI." The remarks do not define RSI, an abbreviation commonly used for recursive self-improvement, in which AI systems contribute to building their successors.

Agents in Search

The section of the remarks with the most direct bearing on advertising concerned agentic AI, systems that take actions on a person's behalf. "One area I'm excited about is helping people get things done, be it booking reservations, filling in forms, scheduling appointments, or making purchases," Pichai said. Google first built these features for the Gemini agent for enterprise customers. "As a next step, we're bringing these features to Search," he said.

"Agents will operate as a unifying layer across our products, so you'll see us extend these agentic experiences beyond Search and the Gemini app to Chrome, Android, and our Workspace products as well."

Some of the purchase layer is already live. On October 15, Google began rolling out Universal Cart in US Search, including AI Mode, and in the Gemini app, with checkout through Google Pay or a handoff to merchants through the Universal Commerce Protocol. Pichai's remarks do not say how ads would appear when an agent books or buys on a user's behalf, and he did not address that question in his October 21 interview either.

Other Bets

Other Bets revenue rose to $372 million from $344 million, while the operating loss widened to $2,047 million from $1,426 million. Pichai said Waymo has driven more than 300 million fully autonomous miles, operates in 15 major US cities, has opened service to the public in San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa, and plans expansion into Canada, Germany, Singapore and Spain. He also said Isomorphic Labs is using Argon in drug design research and that Google had launched TPUs into space under Project Suncatcher.

How the quarter compares with Meta and new rivals

Meta Platforms reported its third quarter a week earlier, on October 21. Its advertising revenue rose 26% to $63.06 billion, driven by a 14% rise in average price per ad and a 10% rise in impressions. Google advertising grew 10.6% over the same period. On those figures, Meta's ad revenue equalled about 77% of Google's in the third quarter, up from about two-thirds a year earlier, PPC Land's calculation based on Meta's reported growth rate.

Spending data from Europe pointed the same way earlier this year. Billy Grace's benchmark of several hundred European advertisers found that Google's share of their spend fell from 62.1% to 57.3% between the first halves of 2025 and 2026, while Meta and other channels gained.

New competition for search intent is also arriving. On October 21, OpenAI said ChatGPT ads were available in 89 countries and that more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns since launch, a cumulative figure that does not show current activity or spend.

None of this shows that Google's advertising business is shrinking. Its advertising revenue grew by $7.8 billion in a year, and at $82.0 billion a quarter it remains larger than Meta's. What the comparison shows is a slower rate than its largest rival, at a time when Alphabet's capital spending and revenue growth are concentrated in Cloud and AI infrastructure.

What the documents do not say

Several figures that advertisers and publishers have relied on in earlier quarters are missing from the October 28 release, presentation and Pichai's published remarks:

• Paid clicks and cost-per-click for Google properties. The release says further information will appear in the 10-Q.
• AI Mode and AI Overviews users, last given as more than 1 billion monthly users for AI Mode in May and more than 2 billion for AI Overviews a year ago.
• AI Max adoption, last given as half a million advertisers in July.
• Updated capital expenditure guidance for 2026 or any figure for 2027.
• Cloud backlog, which stood at $514 billion in July.
• TPU systems revenue, described only as a "meaningful contributor."
• The source of the Network increase, and the split of TAC between distribution and Network partners.

Pichai's published transcript covers only his own prepared remarks, not the rest of the call.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For search advertisers, the third quarter separates two things Alphabet has presented together for more than a year: the growth of search usage and the growth of search revenue. Alphabet says usage is growing at its fastest rate in five years. Revenue from Search rose 12% on the year and barely moved from the second quarter. Revenue per query cannot be calculated without a query count, but the arithmetic has one consequence: if queries are growing faster than a year ago while Search revenue growth fell from 15% to 12%, revenue per query is growing more slowly than it was a year ago, or falling. Whether that reflects fewer ads per query, lower prices per click, or new AI queries that carry no ads yet cannot be resolved without paid click and cost-per-click data. Pichai's statement that Google is building the experience first, "followed by monetization," is the clearest signal of intent, and it describes a sequence rather than a timetable.

For publishers, the modest rise in Network revenue sits alongside a sustained fall in referral traffic documented by Chartbeat and academic research. One quarter of 1% growth on a business that is now 9.1% of Google's ad revenue does not change that picture.

For YouTube buyers, the platform's share of US TV viewing reached a record in August while its ad revenue growth slowed to 9%, and the YouTube items Pichai chose to highlight were subscriptions, custom feeds and the Made on YouTube launches.

And for every advertiser, the composition of Alphabet's revenue has changed quickly. Advertising made up nearly three-quarters of Alphabet's revenue a year ago and under two-thirds in the third quarter of 2026. The company is spending more than $50 billion a quarter on infrastructure, borrowing and issuing shares to fund it, and running negative free cash flow. Its documents do not connect that spending to advertising prices, and they give no timetable for monetizing AI Mode or agentic search.

Timeline

• July 23, 2025 - Alphabet reports second-quarter 2025 results, with Search & other up 12% to $54.2 billion and Google saying AI Overviews drive over 10% more queries
• October 29, 2025 - Alphabet reports its first $100 billion quarter, with Search up 15%, Network down 3%, a $3.5 billion European Commission fine and 650 million Gemini app users
• February 4, 2026 - Alphabet guides 2026 capital expenditure to $175-185 billion and reports 750 million Gemini app users
• February 11, 2026 - Google formally announces shopping ads in AI Mode
• April 29, 2026 - Alphabet reports first-quarter 2026 results, with Network revenue down 4% and Cloud up 63%
• May 2026 - Google says AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly active users
• June 3, 2026 - Alphabet announces about $85 billion of equity financing, including a $40 billion at-the-market programme
• June 29, 2026 - WordStream benchmarks put the median US cost-per-click at $5.42
• July 4, 2026 - Randomized study finds AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8%
• July 17, 2026 - Google's Nick Fox says AI features in Search send billions of clicks a week as Ahrefs data shows a 58% lower click-through rate
• July 22, 2026 - Alphabet reports Search up 17%, Network down 1% and negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion, and raises capex guidance to $195-205 billion
• August 4, 2026 - Billy Grace finds Google's share of European advertisers' spend fell from 62.1% to 57.3%
• September 2, 2026 - Judge Brinkema orders six years of worldwide ad tech remedies instead of an AdX sale
• September 23, 2026 - YouTube presents more than 30 updates at Made on YouTube
• September 29, 2026 - Report says Google pays about 100 publishers through its AI contribution pilot
• October 10, 2026 - PPC Land analysis traces Google's 2026 bidding and default changes
• October 13, 2026 - Google releases Gemini 4 Argon
• October 15, 2026 - Chartbeat data shows search at 12% of North American publisher pageviews; Google begins rolling out Universal Cart in US Search and Gemini
• October 21, 2026 - Meta reports third-quarter ad revenue up 26%; ChatGPT ads reach 89 countries; Pichai says Argon processed almost 25 trillion tokens in 72 hours
• October 22, 2026 - Nielsen's August Gauge shows YouTube at a record 15.8% of US TV time; YouTube rolls out prompt-built custom feeds
• October 27, 2026 - Google announces Genie 4
• October 28, 2026 - Alphabet reports third-quarter revenue of $127.6 billion, with Search & other up 12%, YouTube ads up 9%, Network up 1% and Cloud up 103%; Google announces Gemini 4 Carbon
• November 15, 2026 - Mandatory convertible preferred stock dividend payable
• December 14, 2026 - Common stock dividend of $0.22 per share payable

Related PPC Land coverage

• Google Search ads gain 17% to $63.3 billion while network drops 1% - PPC Land's report on Alphabet's second quarter of 2026, including the capex guidance increase and the first negative free cash flow.
• Alphabet Q1 2026: Google Network ad revenue falls 4% as AI reshapes the web - The first-quarter results, with Search up 19% and Network down 4%.
• Alphabet reaches $102.3 billion in quarterly revenue milestone - The third quarter of 2025, the comparison base for the October 28 figures.
• Alphabet advertising revenues climb 14% as Gemini app reaches 750 million users - The fourth quarter of 2025 and the first 2026 capex guidance.
• Google AI Overviews drive 10% search growth as Alphabet reports $96.4B revenue - The second quarter of 2025, the last time Search grew 12%.
• Alphabet raises $85 billion to bet everything on AI infrastructure - The June equity financing behind this quarter's share sales.
• Meta takes $9.89bn teen settlement charge as ad revenue gains 26% - Meta's third quarter, with ad prices up 14% worldwide.
• Search drops to 12% of North American publisher pageviews, Chartbeat finds - Third-quarter referral data from publishers.
• AI Overviews cut publisher clicks 39.8% in first randomized study - Experimental evidence on organic clicks.
• Google touts billions of weekly AI Search clicks as CTR data drops 58% - Google's traffic claim set against Ahrefs' click-through data.
• Google pays about 100 publishers for AI answers, some under $1,000 - The AI contribution pilot.
• Google faces six-year worldwide ad tech decree instead of AdX sale - The remedies ruling covering AdX and DFP.
• Google AI Mode ads blend into answers and a billion users are watching - How ads entered AI Mode during 2026.
• Google optimises its own revenue. Advertisers have to optimise theirs - Analysis of Google's 2026 bidding and default changes.
• Google Ads CPL drops for first time since 2020 as CPC hits $5.42 - WordStream's 2026 cost benchmarks.
• Google's share of ad spend drops from 62% to 57%, Billy Grace finds - European advertiser spend shifting away from Google.
• Gemini 4 Argon's 25 trillion tokens in 72 hours leave Google short of compute - Pichai's interview on Argon, capacity and agents.
• Google's Universal Cart reaches US shoppers as Meta flips browsing on - Google's agentic shopping cart in Search and Gemini.
• YouTube gains record 15.8% of US TV time in Nielsen's August Gauge - YouTube's viewing share in the United States.
• YouTube lifts custom feed limit to 3, or 8 for Premium members - The custom feeds Pichai cited.
• Neal Mohan bets YouTube's future on brand deals and 35-country affiliates - The Made on YouTube 2026 announcements.
• Advertisers in 26 more countries gain ChatGPT ads, bringing the total to 89 - OpenAI's ad expansion.

Summary

Who: Alphabet Inc., the parent of Google, with chief executive Sundar Pichai quoted in the earnings release and in his published call remarks. The results affect advertisers buying Google Search, YouTube and Network inventory, publishers that depend on Google traffic and AdSense or Ad Manager revenue, and Cloud customers buying Google's AI infrastructure and TPU systems.

What: Third-quarter revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion. Google Search & other grew 12% to $63.35 billion, $79 million more than in the second quarter, while Alphabet said query growth was the highest in five years. YouTube ads grew 9%, Network 1%, TAC 10% and Cloud 103%, cutting advertising to 64.3% of revenue. Capital expenditure reached $51.4 billion, free cash flow was negative $9.1 billion, long-term debt rose to $125.1 billion and Alphabet sold $12.4 billion of shares with no buybacks. Alphabet published no paid click or cost-per-click data and no AI Mode user figures. Pichai said Google is building the best Search experience "followed by monetization" and is bringing agentic features to Search.

When: Alphabet reported on October 28, 2026, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. Gemini 4 Carbon was announced the same day and Genie 4 on October 27. Dividends are payable on November 15 (preferred) and December 14 (common).

Where: Alphabet is based in Mountain View, California. US revenue rose 39%, EMEA 9%, APAC 12% and Other Americas 17%, with the United States supplying about three-quarters of the increase.

Why: The results show Alphabet's growth shifting from advertising to Cloud and AI infrastructure, financed by debt and new shares, while the advertising businesses grew more slowly than in the first half of 2026 and more slowly than Meta's. The gap between record query growth and a flat quarter of Search revenue raises the question of how, and when, Google will monetize AI Mode and agentic search, which Alphabet's documents leave unanswered.