Google needs you to please click on its links

TL;DR: Google’s latest earnings results show that the AI Search features it built to fend off popular chatbots are now denting its revenue growth. The company’s solution, apparently, is to stuff more ads into AI Mode—but that might just be a Band-Aid on a looming problem.

What happened: Google’s still the undisputed Goliath of online advertising and, for many people, still the internet’s front door. But there’s been a troubling slowdown in its Search revenue growth this year. In Q1 it rose about 19%—and this quarter, just 12%.

Who knows if that big AI Search overhaul in May had anything to do with the decline, but the search giant blamed the deceleration on a slew of factors, including unfavorable currency exchange rates (which shrank the value of overseas ad sales)—though it did admit that “lower monetization” in AI Mode had an impact, too (read: The new-ish feature isn’t making enough money). And Google’s proposed solution to the problem probably won’t thrill you: It’s going to show you more ads in AI Mode, of course.

What the ads look like: In the US, Google’s been testing out ads in AI Mode since 2025—which appear below the answer as a clearly labeled “Sponsored” link or embedded into the AI’s response when relevant (here’s what they look like). Yesterday, the company said these AI Mode ads would launch in more countries, while US users will start getting “multi-turn” ads—so each follow-up question can carry a fresh batch of sponsored links.

What’s not clicking?: A few years ago, Google scrambled when AI chatbots appeared on the scene, seemingly able to answer every question under the sun in conversational language—posing a real threat to its Search business. The company responded with an AI blitz of its own, surfacing Gemini-generated Overviews at the top of many searches and later rolling out AI Mode.

The gambit worked at keeping people from defecting entirely to ChatGPT—overall queries grew at their fastest clip in five years, per Google, and queries in AI Mode run three times longer than traditional searches. The problem: So far, research shows people really don’t like to click even on non-sponsored links within AI answers. (As one OpenAI software engineer put it in a recently unearthed internal message about ChatGPT citations, “No matter how prominently we show the links, users won’t click.”)

Bottom line: This Search revenue slowdown resurrects fears about AI’s “cannibalization” of Google’s core business, per UBS analysts. And if AI agents take off, the tech giant faces a bigger worry: We might not even see those sponsored links, let alone click on them, as our bots do all the searching, sifting, and scrolling for us. —WK