Alphabet’s third-quarter 10-Q, filed on 29 October, says paid clicks on Google Search & other rose 8% year on year, after 13% in each of the first two quarters of 2026. Cost-per-click, the average priceGoogle charges per click, rose 4%.
By our arithmetic from Alphabet’s 10-Q filings since the first quarter of 2024, the five-point slowdown is the largest drop between two back-to-back quarters in that series. Paid-click growth of 8% is still above every quarter from the first quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2025, when it ranged from 2% to 7%.
A vertical news Short narrated from the published headlines and opening lines of this piece and three related FourWeekMBA pieces on Google Search.
Business Pill · Distribution Advantage
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on distribution advantage. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss Alphabet or these results.
The key insight: By our arithmetic from Alphabet’s 10-Qs, paid-click growth on Google Search & other fell five points in one quarter, to 8% from 13%, the largest back-to-back drop since 2024, while cost-per-click grew 4%, about half its 2024 to 2025 pace.
Tae Kim, who writes the Substack newsletter Key Context, posted on X on 29 October that “Google’s paid click search volume has significantly deteriorated and decelerated (Source: 10Qs). Game over.” His post quotes an earlier post of his that links his Substack piece titled “Google Is a Secular Short”, and it attaches a table with paid clicks up 13%, 13% and 8% and cost-per-click up 5%, 3% and 4% in the first three quarters of 2026.
Those six figures match the three 2026 10-Q filings. The slowdown he describes is in the filings: growth went from 13% to 8% in one quarter. The volume did not fall; it grew 8%. “Game over” and the short call are his opinion; we do not make a call on the stock.
Year-on-year change in paid clicks and cost-per-click for Google Search & other, Q1 2024 to Q3 2026. Source: Alphabet Form 10-Q filings, MD&A monetization metrics (SEC EDGAR); fourth quarters are not disclosed separately.
What Was Posted on X
Google’s paid click search volume has significantly deteriorated and decelerated (Source: 10Qs). Game over.
Tae Kim on X, 29 Oct: “Google’s paid click search volume has significantly deteriorated and decelerated (Source: 10Qs). Game over.”
Volume Versus Price
Alphabet’s 10-Q defines paid clicks as clicks on ads “on Google search properties and other Google owned and operated properties including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play”, and cost-per-click as “click-driven revenues divided by our total number of paid clicks”.
In the six quarters of 2024 and 2025 that the 10-Qs report (the first three of each year), cost-per-click rose between 7% and 8%. In the three quarters of 2026 it rose 5%, 3% and 4%. Paid-click growth, which ran at 2% to 7% in 2024 and 2025, was 13%, 13% and 8%.
By our arithmetic, multiplying the two third-quarter changes (1.08 × 1.04) gives about 12.3%, close to the 12.0% growth Alphabet reported for Search & other revenue, to $63,350 million. The small difference reflects rounding and the fact that cost-per-click covers click-driven revenue only. On the same arithmetic, about two-thirds of the third-quarter growth came from more clicks and one-third from higher prices; in the third quarter of 2025 it was roughly half and half (7% and 7%).
The 10-Q says changes in paid clicks are driven by factors including “fluctuations in search queries”. It says changes in cost-per-click are driven by factors including “product mix, property mix, and changes in foreign currency exchange rates”.
What Google Said on the Call
On the 28 October earnings call, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said “FX … was the single largest driver of search deceleration relative to Q2”. He also said “the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode”, and that “the majority of AI Mode queries are incremental”.
As we read the filings, 2026 growth in Search & other has been carried by volume rather than price: paid clicks grew 13%, 13% and 8%, while cost-per-click grew 5%, 3% and 4%, against 7% to 8% in each reported quarter of 2024 and 2025.
As we read the third quarter, the slowdown is in the rate of growth, not in the volume itself: paid clicks still grew 8%, more than in any reported quarter from the first quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2025.
As we read the call, Alphabet named currency as the largest driver of the Search slowdown from the second quarter and said AI Mode queries monetised at lower levels; the 10-Q does not split the click metrics by product.
Philipp Schindler, Alphabet chief business officer, Q3 2026 earnings call
“the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode”
Three Implications
FOR ADVERTISERS The 10-Q lists product mix, property mix and currency among the drivers of cost-per-click; Schindler said on the call that the majority of AI Mode queries are incremental.
FOR INVESTORS By our arithmetic, multiplying the third-quarter click and price changes gives about 12.3%, close to the 12.0% Search & other growth Alphabet reported.
FOR ANALYSTS Ashkenazi said on the call that Alphabet left about three points of Search growth from lapping the late-2025 acceleration and expects that to continue in the fourth quarter, a couple of points.
The framework says: “Search gives way to assistants.” It places “the end of incumbent dominance in software and search” in what it calls a medium cycle of 10 to 20 years.
Alphabet’s 10-Q shows paid clicks on Google Search & other still growing, by 8% in the third quarter, with cost-per-click up 4%. The framework does not discuss these results, and Alphabet does not attribute the slowdown to assistants.
What Is Not Established
Alphabet does not report paid clicks or cost-per-click for AI Mode separately, and the 10-Q does not say how much of the change in either metric came from AI Mode, currency or any single factor. Fourth-quarter figures are not disclosed on their own; the 10-K gives full-year changes only (paid clicks up 5% in 2024 and 6% in 2025). The volume-and-price split and the growth comparisons are our arithmetic from the rounded percentages Alphabet reports.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
Alphabet’s filings show paid clicks on Google Search & other growing 8% in the third quarter, down from 13% in the first half of 2026, while cost-per-click grew 4%. By our arithmetic, the slowdown is the sharpest in the series since 2024, and the price side has run at about half its 2024 to 2025 pace all year.
95,000+ executives read Business Engineer for the AI strategy frameworks cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
A note on sourcing. Paid-click and cost-per-click changes come from the monetization-metrics tables in Alphabet’s Form 10-Q filings (first quarter 2024 to third quarter 2026) and 10-K filings on SEC EDGAR; Search & other revenue comes from Alphabet’s earnings releases. Call quotes come from the live-caption transcript of Alphabet’s 28 October call. The comparisons, the multiplication check and the volume-and-price split are our arithmetic from Alphabet’s rounded percentages. The post on X is attributed to its author; linked earlier pieces carry their own sources.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
