Google Search is making more money per click since adding AI, not less
The bearish prediction that AI would cannibalize Google Search revenue has not played out: both click volume and per-click price have risen since Google embedded AI in Search.
The standard worry about Google and AI was simple: if a chatbot answers a question directly, the user never clicks a search link, the advertiser never pays, and Search revenue shrinks. Sebastian Mallaby says that prediction has been wrong on both counts.
It turns out that Google now gets more clicks on its search links than it used to and it charges more for each one than it used to because the value of the click is bigger with AI embedded in it. Sebastian Mallaby
According to Mallaby, Google is now seeing higher click volumes on its search links than before AI was embedded, and it is charging more per click. The logic he offers is that AI raises the value of the destination: a click that follows a richer, AI-assisted result is worth more to an advertiser, so the price follows. “The value of the click is bigger with AI embedded in it,” as he put it.
That does not settle every question about Google’s AI trajectory. Anjney Midha has argued that an internal compute credit system cost Google the GPT moment, and competition is clearly intensifying. But on the specific question of whether AI integration would hollow out Search monetization, the early evidence Mallaby describes points the other way.