Google Search Revenue Growth Slows to 12% as It Expands Ads in AI Search
Google says AI Mode doesn't monetize as well as traditional search, which weighed on search revenue growth. With AI search already available in South Korea, the question is how broadly the ad push will apply there.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported slower search revenue growth in its third-quarter results released on October 28. Revenue from “Google Search & other,” the line item that bundles search with related services, came to $63.35 billion, up roughly 12% from a year earlier. Google said that while usage of AI Mode is climbing fast, it does not attract as much advertising revenue as conventional search, which affected the search growth rate.
The wider business grew faster than search. Alphabet’s quarterly revenue reached $127.577 billion, up 25% year over year. Google Cloud brought in $30.709 billion, a 103% jump that more than doubled the figure from a year ago. Search revenue still grew, but the pace slipped from 17% in the previous quarter to 12% this time.
More queries, less revenue growth
Revenue did not keep pace with the rise in search usage. Alphabet said the year-over-year growth in the number of search queries was the highest in the past five years. The number of questions users ask has climbed quickly, Google said, but how they search changes how much the company earns.
Philipp Schindler, Alphabet’s chief business officer, told the earnings call that weaker monetization in AI Mode was one factor behind the search revenue growth rate. He pointed to currency effects as the biggest reason growth came in below the prior quarter, and said conditions in specific advertiser categories also played a role. Some investors have worried that AI search could cannibalize Google’s existing search business.
Google is adding more advertising inside AI search. The company said it is widening the pool of users and queries that see ads in AI Overviews, the AI summaries that sit above search results, as well as in AI Mode. It is also expanding beyond the United States, and in the US it mentioned placing ads within multi-turn conversations where questions and answers continue back and forth. The aim is to convert rising AI search usage into advertising revenue.
Will Anything Change in South Korea?
AI Mode is already available in Korea and works in Korean. Google announced Korean-language support and a Korean rollout in September 2025. It answers complex questions with AI, shows related web links alongside the response, and allows follow-up questions. Queries can be entered by voice and image as well as text.
The answers are not always correct. Google notes that AI Mode responses may contain errors, and says that for questions where it cannot produce a reliable AI answer, it falls back on standard web search results.
The quarter illustrates a gap between how fast AI search usage is growing and how fast search revenue is growing. Google is handling more queries while simultaneously expanding ads inside AI answers and conversations. For users in Korea, the key question is when that ad expansion arrives and how broadly it applies.