Alphabet reported First-quarter 2026 profits with Google search revenue and others increased 19% year-over-year to $60.4 billion. Microsoft announcement the same day Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, with advertising revenue up 12%.
Both companies had strong research quarters. But one element of Alphabet’s report tells a different story for websites that rely on Google’s ad network for revenue.
Google network revenue fell below $7 billion
The “Network” segment, which includes AdSense, AdMob and Google Ad Manager, is not an indicator of the web advertising economy as a whole, but is a clear financial indicator related to ads outside of Google surfaces. For publishers and app developers who rely on Google-brokered ads, this decline affects them more than growth in search revenue.
It has declined over two years, with Google’s network shrinking each quarter from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026. Q1 2026’s $6.97 billion is the lowest, below $7 billion for the first time.
The gap is becoming more and more obvious. In the first quarter of 2024, the Google Network accounted for approximately 12% of Google’s advertising revenue; in the first quarter of 2026, it fell to around 9%. Meanwhile, the Google Search & Others sector grew from $46.2 billion to $60.4 billion, with search growing 31% and other contracting 6%.
This decline does not match that of the overall digital advertising market. THE IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report found that programmatic advertising in the United States grew 20.5% in 2025 to $162.4 billion. The programmatic market has grown, unlike Alphabet’s Google Network line.
The quarterly figures attenuate the more marked disruptions at the publisher level. In January, a two-day technical outage in Google’s ad exchange has led AdSense publishers to report eCPM and RPM drops of 50-90% without a corresponding drop in traffic. Google fixed the problem, but it showed how fragile publisher-side network monetization can be.
Bing’s milestone in context
While Google’s revenue breakdown suggests an inward shift of the ecosystem, Microsoft is leaning heavily on user acquisition to prove its bets on AI are paying off.
CEO Satya Nadella revealed during the Q3 FY26 earnings call that Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time. Search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, increased 12%. Edge has gained browser market share for 20 consecutive quarters.
The broader segment, which includes Bing, was down 1% overall to $13.2 billion. The publicity about the searches was the positive point.
Bing global search share still stands at around 5% globally, according to March 2026 data from StatCounter. This gap between 1 billion MAU and around 5% of global share raises questions about what the MAU figure measures. Microsoft has not defined the frequency, overlap, or how AI-related usage of Bing is counted.
Microsoft also creates important measurement tools for SEOs. Bing Webmaster Tools now maps basic queries to cited pagesand Microsoft share quote in preview at SEO Week in April. When Citation Share becomes available, it could become one of the first tools the platform provides to compare AI visibility on Bing versus its competitors.
CFO Amy Hood reported fourth-quarter search ad growth in the high single digits, compared to three quarters of double digits. Nadella said the consumer company was doing “the groundwork necessary to win back fans.” Bing’s results support maintaining coverage, without abandoning Google’s priority.
Why it matters for research professionals
For over a year, SEO professionals have been monitoring whether AI previews and AI mode decrease clicks to publisher sites. These reports do not resolve this question but support a model documented by independent research.
Google’s search business is growing, with CEO Sundar Pichai calling queries “an all-time high.” Philipp Schindler, chief commercial officer, attributed the quarter’s strength to retail, finance and healthcare.
What is in dispute is what happens after the request. Google’s network revenues have fallen, while search revenues have accelerated, suggesting more searches remain on Google surfaces. The data does not prove that AI insights or AI mode caused the network’s decline. Google’s network can decline for a variety of reasons, such as advertising demand and product changes, providing search marketers with another financial signal to compare with publisher traffic, CTR, and revenue.
Third-party data partly fills this gap, even if the studies measure different things. A Ahrefs study analyzed 300,000 keywords using desktop CTR data and found that AI insights correlate with 58% lower click-through rates. Chartbeat data shared by Axios showed that small publishers lost 60% of search traffic over two years, medium publishers lost 47%, and large publishers lost 22%.
Seer Interactive followed a drop in organic CTR from 1.41% to 0.64% for queries with AI previews. Its April update showed some healing. Organic CTR on AI Feature Queries rose from 1.3% in December to 2.4% in February. The worst of the initial drop may have subsided, but the CTR is still much lower than pages without AI previews.
Google’s Liz Reid on Bloomberg’s Claims AI Previews Reduce “Bounce Clicks”” rather than useful visits, but does not provide supporting data. She said they track search recurrence, which measures Google retention rather than publisher traffic. made a similar argument during Google Marketing Live, calling clicks from AI-enhanced search “more highly qualified” without sharing supporting data.
Search activity continues to grow according to disclosed metrics. However, value capture is evolving. Metrics like referral traffic, AdSense RPM, or organic CTR may no longer match search revenue growth. Google’s revenue can increase even if publisher traffic decreases.
What neither company disclosed
Neither company has disclosed the extent to which AI-assisted query growth produces outbound clicks to publisher sites; this figure has been missing from revenue reports since the launch of AI features in search.
Pichai said queries are “at an all-time high,” referring to searches and not clicks to external sites. Microsoft hasn’t clarified what counts toward Bing’s billion MAUs, including whether Copilot interactions, API calls, or agent requests are included.
Looking to the future
Pichai said more information about the search will be shared at Google I/O in May and Google Marketing Live.
Microsoft’s Citation Share has not yet shipped; once it does, it could be one of the first platform tools to benchmark AI visibility on Bing. Its usefulness depends on whether Microsoft discloses outbound click data alongside its MAU figures.
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