Google Q3 Report: AI Mode, AI Overviews Lift Total Search Usage via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google used its Q3 earnings call to argue that AI features are expanding search usage rather than cannibalizing it.

CEO Sundar Pichai described an “expansionary moment for Search,” adding that Google’s AI experiences “highlight the web” and send “billions of clicks to sites every day.”

Pichai said overall queries and commercial queries both grew year over year, and that the growth rate increased in Q3 versus Q2, largely driven by AI Overviews and AI Mode.

What Did Google Report In Its Q3 Earnings?

AI Mode & AI Overviews

Pichai reported “strong and consistent” week-over-week growth for AI Mode in the U.S., with queries doubling in the quarter.

He said Google rolled AI Mode out globally across 40 languages, reached over 75 million daily active users, and shipped more than 100 improvements in Q3.

He also said AI Mode is already driving “incremental total query growth for Search.”

Pichai reiterated that AI Overviews “drive meaningful query growth,” noting the effect was “even stronger” in Q3 and more pronounced among younger users.

Revenue: By The Numbers

Alphabet posted $102.3 billion in revenue, its first $100B quarter. “Google Search & other” revenue reached $56.6 billion, up from $49.4 billion a year earlier.

YouTube ads revenue reached $10.26 billion in Q3. Pichai said YouTube “has remained number one in streaming watch time in the U.S. for more than two years, according to Nielsen.”

Pichai added that in the U.S. “Shorts now earn more revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream.”

The quarter also included a $3.5 billion European Commission fine that Alphabet notes when discussing margins. Excluding that charge, operating margin was 33.9%.

Why It Matters

Google is telling Wall Street that AI surfaces expand search rather than replace it. If that holds, the company has reason to put AI Mode and AI Overviews in front of more queries.

The near-term implication for marketers is a distribution shift inside Google, not a pullback from search.

What’s missing is as important as what was said. Google didn’t share outbound click share from AI experiences or new reporting to track them. Expect adoption to grow while measurement lags. Teams will be relying on their own analytics to judge impact.

The revenue backdrop supports continued investment. “Search & other” rose year over year and Google highlighted growth in commercial queries. Paid budgets are likely to remain with Google as AI-led sessions take up a larger share of usage.

Looking Ahead

Google plans to keep pushing AI-led search surfaces. Pichai said the company is “looking forward to the release of Gemini 3 later this year,” which would give AI Mode and AI Overviews a stronger model foundation if the timing holds.

Google described Chrome as “a browser powered by AI” with deeper integrations to Gemini and AI Mode and “more agentic capabilities coming soon.”

The company also raised 2025 capex guidance to $91–$93 billion to meet AI demand, which supports continued investment in search infrastructure and features.

Featured Image: Photo Agency/Shutterstock

Google’s Advice On Canonicals: They’re Case Sensitive via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about canonicals, expressing his opinion that “hope” shouldn’t be a part of your SEO strategy with regard to canonicals. The implication is that hoping Google will figure it out on its own misses the point of what SEO is about.

Canonicals And Case Sensitivity

Rel=canonical is an HTML tag that enables a publisher or SEO to tell Google what their preferred URL is. For example, it’s useful for suggesting the best URL when there are multiple URLs with the same or similar content. Google isn’t obligated to obey the rel=canonical declaration, it’s treated as a strong hint.

Someone on Reddit was in the situation where a website has category names that they begin with a capitalized letter but the canonical tag contains a lowercase version. There is currently a redirect from the lowercase version to the uppercase.

They’re currently not seeing any negative impact from this state of the website and were asking if it’s okay to leave it as-is because it hasn’t affected search visibility.

The person asking the question wrote:

“…I’m running into something annoying on our blog and could use a sanity check before I push dev too hard to fix it. It’s been an issue for a month, after a redesign was launched.

All of our URLs resolve in this format: /site/Topic/topic-title/

…but the canonical tag uses a lowercase topic, like: /site/topic/topic-title/

So the canonical doesn’t exactly match the actual URL’s case. Lowercase topic 301 redirects to the correct, uppercase version.

I know that mismatched canonicals can send mixed signals to Google.

Dev is asking, “Are you seeing any real impact from this?” and technically, the answer is no — but I still think it’s worth fixing to follow best practices.”

If It Works Don’t Fix It?

This is an interesting case because in many things related to SEO if something’s working there’s little point trying to fix a small detail for fear of triggering a negative response. Relying on Google to figure things out is another fallback.

Google’s John Mueller has a different opinion. He responded:

“URL path, filename, and query parameters are case-sensitive, the hostname / domain name aren’t. Case-sensitivity matters for canonicalization, so it’s a good idea to be consistent there. If it serves the same content, it’ll probably be seen as a duplicate and folded together, but “hope” should not be a part of an SEO strategy.

Case-sensitivity in URLs also matters for robots.txt.”

Takeaway

I know that in highly competitive niches the SEO is on a generally flawless level. If there’s something to improve it gets improved. And there’s a good reason for that. Someone at one of the search engines once told me that anything you can do to make it easier for the crawlers is a win. They advised me to make sites easy to crawl and content easy to understand. That advice is still useful, it follows with Mueller’s advice to not “hope” that Google figures things out, implying that it’s best to make sure they do work out.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/MyronovDesign