Alphabet says AI is lifting Search queries to a five-year high in growth

Alphabet said on Wednesday, October 28, that its AI investments are pushing Google Search queries up faster than at any point in the past five years.

“Our AI investments are driving overall Search query growth, including commercial queries,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in the company’s third-quarter 2026 earnings. “In fact, our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it’s been in the last five years.”¹ The company’s own transcript of his remarks repeats the point and adds that the AI work is driving “increased usage” of Search.²

What the numbers show

Alphabet’s consolidated revenue for the quarter was $127.6 billion, up 25 percent from a year earlier. “Google Search & other” revenue rose 12 percent.¹ CNBC puts the Search figure at $63.35 billion, which fell short of the $64.96 billion analysts expected.³

So query growth is strong, but Search revenue did not beat Wall Street’s forecast. Alphabet’s overall results missed on both revenue and adjusted earnings per share ($2.67 against $3.02 expected), and the stock fell more than 10 percent after the report.³

Google Cloud was the standout. Its revenue rose 103 percent to $30.7 billion.¹ Pichai also said the Gemini app has reached one billion users and called it the fastest-growing product in Google’s history.²

What it means for Search users

Pichai tied the growth to AI features, but the reports do not break out which ones or how much each contributes. Google has been adding AI answers to Search for some time. When it launched the experimental AI Mode in March 2025, a Google product executive said testers were asking questions about twice as long as traditional searches and following up about a quarter of the time.⁴ That is the kind of use Google says it wants more of, though the earnings materials do not say how much AI Mode or AI Overviews contribute to the new growth rate.

For people who use Search, the practical takeaway is that Google intends to keep building AI into it. The company is also spending heavily to support that: CNBC reports capital expenditures of $51.36 billion in the quarter and an expectation that annual capex will top $200 billion this year before exceeding $300 billion in 2027.³ Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said capex will “increase significantly in 2027,” with more detail promised on the fourth-quarter call.³

The query-growth claim comes from Alphabet’s CEO, and the reports here repeat it without independent measurement. It is a company statement, not an outside count.

Our read: The query-growth figure is the one the CEO stated and consolidated revenue is up, while Search revenue rose 12 percent and missed forecasts. Capital expenditures are rising as the company has described. What to watch is whether that growth turns into Search revenue that beats forecasts, and what Alphabet says about 2027 spending on the Q4 call.

For related context on how AI is changing what people see online, see our look at Valve and Steam’s AI content problem.

Footnotes

1. The Verge, “Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Google Blog, “Q3 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩²

3. CNBC, “Alphabet sinks 10% as it holds 2026 capex unchanged, expects significant increase in 2027”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. TechCrunch, “Google Search’s new ‘AI Mode’ lets users ask complex, multi-part questions”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩