Google Search Revenue Grew 19% In Q1, Pichai Cites AI via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Alphabet reported Q1 2026 earnings, with Google Search & Other revenue rising 19% year over year to $60.4 billion. CEO Sundar Pichai tied the quarter’s Search performance to AI Overviews and AI Mode, saying people are “coming back to Search more.”

Q1 revenue was lower sequentially than Q4 2025, when Search & Other came in at $63.1 billion, but year-over-year growth increased from 17% to 19%. Total Alphabet revenue reached $109.9 billion, up 22%.

Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted Google Services “benefited from a strong FX tailwind” this quarter, which boosted the reported numbers above constant-currency growth.

What Pichai Said About Search

In his prepared remarks, Pichai connected the Search number to AI experiences, stating:

“People love our AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews, and they’re coming back to Search more.”

Pichai also said, “queries are at an all-time high.” He described “strong growth in both users and usage of AI Mode globally” without sharing an exact figure. Past Google disclosures put AI Mode at roughly 100 million monthly active users and 75 million daily.

Pichai said AI Overviews “are driving overall Search growth.” Liz Reid made a similar engagement argument on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots earlier this month, describing AI Overviews as reducing low-value clicks rather than reducing useful traffic.

Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler offered a more specific read on what drove the Search number. He said Search & Other growth was “primarily driven by retail and finance,” with health also contributing.

In the Q&A, Schindler added that “the strength we saw in Search was not due to a single driver, but was really the result of many parts of our business showing strength and working very well together.”

New Data On Search Speed And AI Costs

Pichai shared two efficiency figures.

The first was latency. Pichai said:

“Even as we’ve brought new AI features into our results page, we’ve reduced Search latency by more than 35% over the past five years.”

The second was the cost of running AI responses. He continued:

“Since upgrading AI Overviews and AI Mode to Gemini 3, we’ve reduced the cost of core AI responses by more than 30% thanks to continued hardware and engineering breakthroughs.”

Search Updates Pichai Highlighted

Pichai highlighted three Search rollout items from the quarter.

Personal Intelligence “expanded broadly in the U.S.,” referring to Google’s March expansion of Personal Intelligence to free U.S. users.

Agentic experiences shipped to new countries. Pichai cited restaurant booking as one of the early examples of what Pichai has called “search as an agent manager.”

Search Live multimodal capabilities went global.

Why This Matters

Over the past year, SEO professionals worried AI Overviews would reduce clicks to sites by satisfying user intent on the results page. Q1 numbers challenge that idea. If AI were cannibalizing traditional search, query volume and revenue would flatten. Instead, both increased.

But this doesn’t mean concerns are unfounded. “All-time high queries” doesn’t imply all-time high publisher clicks. Google hasn’t disclosed click-through rates or revenue split between AI Mode and traditional ads. More queries could mean fewer clicks per query if AI answers resolve intent early.

However, the revenue growth indicates the search ecosystem is expanding, even as user interaction patterns shift.

Looking Ahead

Google’s earnings show AI features are expanding search, but key questions remain about monetization and click-through rates.

Pichai said more info about Search will be shared at Google I/O in May and Google Marketing Live.