Alphabet’s quarter put a price tag on AI Mode, and Microsoft’s own ad numbers arrived the same day. Around the money, Google opened new surfaces for apps and answers while a rank-tracking vendor admitted its data had been fed bad pages.
Following The Money: AI Mode Ads Meet The Earnings Call
Alphabet and Microsoft both reported search revenue growth of 12%, but the surrounding detail points in different directions. Watch the reporting gaps as closely as the headline figures.
- Google Search Revenue Stalls as AI Mode Monetizes Less Search & other reached $63.35 billion, barely above the prior quarter, and Alphabet’s chief business officer named currency, retail, and media before saying AI Mode queries monetize less. No dollar figure was given for that effect, and no click data for publishers came with it.
- Google Takes AI Mode Ads Abroad and Adds Follow-Up Ads in the U.S. Sponsored placements now reach ten more markets, with Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom due in the fourth quarter. U.S. teams should check whether their reports separate first-turn placements from the new multiturn ones.
- Microsoft search ad revenue rises 12% in fiscal Q1 2027 The figure excludes traffic acquisition costs and covers search and advertising as a whole, so it does not isolate Bing. It reads as steady growth, which is a reason to keep testing the platform but not to move spend away from Google.
Answers Without Pages: What Gets Chosen In AI Search
One announcement lets an app deliver the answer, and one study asks what makes a page worth citing. Both leave the hard questions open.
- Google Opens Connected Apps to Developers, Putting Apps Inside Search The preview is opt-in, since searchers must switch an app on in their settings, and Google has not said how it will pick between competing apps. That makes distribution a persuasion problem before it is a ranking one.
- Pages AI Cites Lead With Answers More Often, Large Study Finds Across 193,507 AI answers, cited pages opened with a direct answer more often than uncited ones. The design shows association only, so an answer-first rewrite is a cheap test to run on a matched group of pages, not a proven fix.
Data And Controls: Who Holds The Switch
Restaurants gain a control, Google explains what it ignores in Search Console, and a vendor concedes its numbers needed filtering. Check your own reports before trusting anyone else’s.
- Restaurants Can Now Hide Delivery Apps From Their Google Profiles A Manage provider panel offers separate toggles for pickup and delivery, so a restaurant can steer diners to its own ordering page without a ticket. Google has not said whether the switch works across many locations at once.
- Semrush Confirms It Is Filtering Bad Google Results The vendor says misleading pages reached its collection systems and that new checks flag doubtful results for recollection. It gave no share of affected data and no word on whether stored history changed, so compare unexplained movements against Search Console.
- Google: 404s Don’t Drain Crawl Budget, but 500s and 429s Slow It Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin say a 404 list is a triage queue, not a penalty queue. The risk to check is bot rate limiting that serves Googlebot 429 or 5xx responses.
Today’s Quick Hits
- WordPress 7.1.4 patches 22 flaws, including an update-process race The most serious bug is a race condition in the core update routine that could allow remote code execution, so confirm auto-updates applied on every client install.
- Google Is Adding Messenger Links to Business Profiles Automatically Owners are getting emails that Meta’s m.me chat links are being written into their profiles, so check the linked Facebook Page and who monitors its inbox.