Alphabet reported Q1 2026 earnings, with Google Search and Other revenue rising 19% year over year to $60.4 billion. CEO Sundar Photosi tied Search’s quarterly performance to AI Overviews and AI Mode, saying people are “coming back to Search more.”
Q1 revenue was sequentially lower than Q4 2025, when Search & Other came in at $63.1 billion, but year-over-year growth increased from 17% to 19%. Alphabet’s total revenue reached $109.9 billion, up 22%.
Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted Google Services “benefited from strong FX growth” this quarter, which boosted the reported numbers on top of ongoing revenue growth.
What Photos Says About Search
In his prepared remarks, Photosi linked Search’s number to AI information, saying:
“People love our AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Overview, and they’ll come back to Search for more.”
Photosi also said, “the questions are very high.” He described “strong growth in both users and usage of AI Mode globally” without sharing an exact figure. Previous disclosures by Google put AI Mode at around 100 million active users and 75 million daily.
Pichai said AI Overviews is “driving the growth of Search overall.” Liz Reid made a similar argument for engagement in Bloomberg’s Odd Lots earlier this month, describing AI Overview as reducing low-value clicks rather than reducing useful traffic.
Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler gave a detailed read on what drove Search’s number. He said Search & Other’s growth is “driven by retail and finance,” with health also contributing.
In the Q&A, Schindler added that “the strength we’ve seen in Search has not been the result of a single driver, but actually the result of many parts of our business showing strength and efficiency together.”
New Data on Search Speed and Cost of AI
Photosi shared two statistics of efficiency.
The first was the delay. Photosi says:
“While we’ve brought new AI features to our results page, we’ve reduced Search latency by over 35% over the past five years.”
The second was the cost of using AI responses. He continued:
“Since the development of AI Overview and AI Mode to Gemini 3, we have reduced the cost of core AI solutions by more than 30% thanks to continuous hardware and engineering achievements.”
Search Updates Featured Images
Photos highlighted three Sesho releases from the quarter.
Personal Intelligence “expanded significantly in the US,” referring to Google’s March expansion of Personal Intelligence to free US users.
The agent’s experience is sent to new countries. Photosi cited restaurant reservations as one of the early examples of what Photosi called “search as an agent manager.”
Search for Live multimodal skills traveling around the world.
Why This Matters
Over the past year, SEO experts have been watching to see if AI Overview reduces clicks by satisfying more intent on the results page. Q1’s alphabetical results do not resolve that question.
Google reported higher Search revenue, and Photosi said queries were higher. Schindler also said that search power is not driven by one thing, citing retail, finance and health as contributors.
That’s important because Google’s business can grow while publisher click patterns change. “All-time high queries” does not define all-time high exit clicks. Google has not disclosed click rates for AI Overviews or AI Mode, or how revenue is split between AI and traditional search ads.
Q1 numbers show that Google Search’s business is still growing. They don’t answer whether websites get more or fewer clicks from AI-influenced results.
Looking Forward
Google’s earnings show that Search revenue is still growing, but important questions remain about how AI features affect monetization and click-through rates.
Photosi said more information about Search will be shared at Google I/O in May and at Google Marketing Live.
