Alphabet reported First quarter 2026 results, with Google search and other revenue up 19% year-over-year to $60.4 billion. Sundar Pichai, CEO related quarter’s search performance to AI Insights and AI Mode, indicating that people are “coming back to search more.”
First quarter revenue was lower sequentially than fourth quarter 2025, when Search & Other reached $63.1 billionbut year-over-year growth increased from 17% to 19%. Alphabet’s total revenue reached $109.9 billion, up 22%.
Chief Commercial Officer Philipp Schindler noted that Google services “benefited from a strong foreign exchange tailwind” this quarter, which lifted the reported figures above constant currency growth.
What Pichai said about research
In his prepared remarks, Pichai connected the research number to AI experiments, saying:
“People love our AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Previews, and they’re coming back for more.”
Pichai also said, “requests are at an all-time high.” He described “strong growth in AI mode users and usage globally” without sharing an exact figure. Past disclosures from Google estimate AI Mode at around 100 million monthly active users and 75 million daily.
Pichai said AI insights are “driving overall research growth.” Liz Reid made a similar engagement argument on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots earlier this month, describing AI insights as reducing low-value clicks rather than reducing useful traffic.
Philipp Schindler, commercial director, offered a more precise reading of what motivated the search number. He said Search & Other’s growth was “primarily driven by retail and finance,” with healthcare also contributing.
In the Q&A session, Schindler added that “the strength we saw in search was not due to a single driver, but was actually the result of the strength of multiple areas of our business working very well together.”
New data on search speed and AI costs
Pichai shared two efficiency figures.
The first was latency. Pichai said:
“Even though we introduced new AI features to our results page, we reduced search latency by more than 35% over the last five years. »
The second was the cost of executing the AI responses. He continued:
“Since upgrading AI Previews and AI Mode to Gemini 3, we have reduced the cost of basic AI responses by more than 30% through continued advancements in hardware and engineering. »
Searching for updates Pichai highlighted
Pichai highlighted three elements of research deployment during the quarter.
Personal intelligence “has largely developed in the United States”, in reference to Google’s strategy. March Expansion of Personal Intelligence to Unleash US Users.
Agent experiences shipped to new countries. Pichai cited restaurant reservation as one of the first examples of what Pichai called “research as agent manager”.
Search Live’s multimodal capabilities have gone global.
Why it matters
Over the past year, SEO professionals have been observing whether AI previews reduce clicks by satisfying more intent on the results page. Alphabet’s first-quarter results don’t resolve that question.
Google reported higher search revenue and Pichai said queries were at an all-time high. Schindler also said the strength of the research was not due to a single factor, citing retail, finance and healthcare as contributors.
This is important because Google’s business may grow as publishers’ click patterns change. “Record queries” does not mean record outbound clicks. Google has not disclosed click-through rates for AI previews or AI Mode, nor the revenue split between AI and traditional search ads.
Q1 figures show that Google’s search business continues to grow. They don’t answer whether websites receive more or fewer clicks from AI-influenced results.
Looking to the future
Google’s results show that search revenue continues to grow, but key questions remain about how AI features affect monetization and click-through rates.
Pichai said more information about the search will be shared during Google I/O in May and Google Marketing Live.
