<\/p>
Alphabet reported Q1 2026 earnings with Google Search & Other revenue rising 19% year over year to $60.4 billion. Microsoft announced on the same day that Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, with search ad revenue up 12%.<\/p>
Both companies posted strong search quarters. But one line item in Alphabet\u2019s report tells a different story for the websites that depend on Google\u2019s ad network for revenue.<\/p>
The \u201cNetwork\u201d segment, including AdSense, AdMob, and Google Ad Manager, isn\u2019t a proxy for the entire web\u2019s ad economy but is a clear financial indicator tied to ads outside Google\u2019s surfaces. For publishers and app developers relying on Google-brokered ads, the decline affects them more than it affects Search revenue growth.<\/p>
It has been shrinking over two years, with Google Network declining each quarter from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026. Q1 2026\u2019s $6.97 billion is the lowest, below $7 billion for the first time.<\/p>
The gap is increasingly evident. In Q1 2024, Google Network accounted for about 12% of Google\u2019s ad revenue; by Q1 2026, it fell to roughly 9%. Meanwhile, Google Search & Other grew from $46.2 billion to $60.4 billion, with Search expanding 31% and Others contracting 6%.<\/p>
The decline doesn\u2019t match the overall digital ad market. The IAB\/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report found that\u00a0U.S. programmatic advertising grew 20.5% in 2025 to $162.4 billion. The programmatic market grew while Alphabet\u2019s Google Network line didn\u2019t.<\/p>
The quarterly numbers smooth over sharper disruptions at the publisher level. In January, a two-day technical failure in Google\u2019s ad exchange led AdSense publishers to report eCPM and RPM drops of 50-90% without corresponding declines in traffic. Google resolved the issue, but it showed how fragile publisher-side network monetization can be.<\/p>
While Google\u2019s revenue mix hints at an ecosystem shifting inward, Microsoft is leaning heavily into user acquisition to prove its AI bets are paying off.<\/p>
CEO Satya Nadella revealed during the FY26 Q3 earnings call that Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time. Search ad revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, grew 12%. Edge has gained browser market share for 20 consecutive quarters.<\/p>
The broader segment, which includes Bing, was down 1% overall to $13.2 billion. Search advertising was the bright spot within it.<\/p>
Bing\u2019s global search share still sits at about 5% worldwide per StatCounter\u2019s March 2026 data. That gap between 1 billion MAU and roughly 5% global share raises questions about what the MAU figure measures. Microsoft hasn\u2019t defined frequency, overlap, or how AI-related Bing usage is counted.<\/p>
Microsoft is also building measurement tools that matter for SEOs. Bing Webmaster Tools now maps grounding queries to cited pages, and Microsoft previewed Citation Share at SEO Week in April. When Citation Share ships, it could become one of the first platform-provided tools for comparing AI visibility on Bing against competitors.<\/p>
CFO Amy Hood reported Q4 search ad growth in the high single digits, down from three double-digit quarters. Nadella said the consumer business is doing \u201cthe foundational work required to win back fans.\u201d Bing\u2019s results support maintaining coverage, not dropping Google-first focus.<\/p>
For over a year, SEO professionals have monitored whether AI Overviews and AI Mode decrease clicks to publisher sites. These reports don\u2019t settle that question but support a pattern documented by independent research.<\/p>
Google\u2019s Search business is growing, with CEO Sundar Pichai calling queries \u201cat an all-time high.\u201d Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler attributed the quarter\u2019s strength to retail, finance, and health.<\/p>
What\u2019s contested is what happens after the query. Google Network revenue fell, while Search revenue accelerated, suggesting more searches stay on Google surfaces. The data doesn\u2019t prove AI Overviews or AI Mode caused the Network decline. Google Network can decline for various reasons, such as ad demand and product changes, providing search marketers with another financial signal to compare with traffic, CTR, and publisher revenue.<\/p>
Third-party data partially fills the gap, though studies measure different things. An Ahrefs study analyzed 300,000 keywords using desktop CTR data and found that AI Overviews correlate with 58% lower click-through rates. Chartbeat data shared by Axios showed small publishers lost 60% of search traffic over two years, medium publishers 47%, and large publishers 22%.<\/p>
Seer Interactive tracked an organic CTR drop from 1.41% to 0.64% for queries with AI Overviews. Its April update showed some recovery. Organic CTR on AI Overview queries climbed from 1.3% in December to 2.4% in February. The worst of the initial drop may have eased, but CTR is still well below that of pages without AI Overviews.<\/p>
Google\u2019s Liz Reid on Bloomberg claims AI Overviews reduce \u201cbounce clicks\u201d rather than\u00a0useful visits, but doesn\u2019t provide supporting data. She said they track search recurrence, which measures Google\u2019s retention rather than publisher traffic. Google executives made a similar argument at Google Marketing Live, calling clicks from AI-enhanced search \u201cmore highly qualified\u201d without sharing supporting data.<\/p>
Search activity continues to grow according to disclosed metrics. However, the value capture is shifting. Metrics like referral traffic, AdSense RPM, or organic CTR may no longer align with search revenue growth. Google\u2019s revenue can rise even as publisher traffic declines.<\/p>
Neither company disclosed how much AI-assisted query growth produces outbound clicks to publisher sites; that number has been absent from earnings reports since AI features launched in Search.<\/p>
Pichai said queries are \u201cat an all-time high,\u201d referring to searches, not clicks to external sites. Microsoft hasn\u2019t clarified what counts toward Bing\u2019s 1 billion MAU, including whether Copilot interactions, API calls, or agent queries are included.<\/p>
Pichai said more Search info will be shared at Google I\/O in May and Google Marketing Live.<\/p>
Microsoft\u2019s Citation Share hasn\u2019t shipped yet; once it does, it could be among the first platform tools for comparing AI visibility on Bing. Its usefulness depends on whether Microsoft discloses outbound click data alongside its MAU figures.<\/p>
More Resources:<\/strong><\/p> <\/div> #Google #ampamp #Microsoft #Earnings #Search #sejournal #MattGSouthern1778045269<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alphabet reported Q1 2026 earnings with Google Search & Other revenue rising 19% year over year to $60.4 billion. Microsoft announced on the same day that Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, with search ad revenue up 12%. Both companies posted strong search quarters. But one line item in Alphabet\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[877,318,75,90,734,95,80],"class_list":["post-7593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-ampamp","tag-earnings","tag-google","tag-mattgsouthern","tag-microsoft","tag-search","tag-sejournal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}