Why Google Stock Is Down Today -- WSJ

By Erin Woo and Hannah Erin Lang

Analysts are fleshing out their concerns today about Alphabet shares, led by the Google parent's miss in the search business that helped suppress third-quarter revenue growth.

"The slowdown in search surprised us this quarter as we thought Google was capturing more of the benefit of an expanding search market from AI," wrote analysts at Citizens, which downgraded the stock to "market perform" from outperform. "Google has significant execution risk ahead," the analysts added.

"More questions than answers," UBS analysts summarized in their own report this morning. "Beyond the surprising shortfall on Search and YouTube... Google struck what was a more measured/deliberate tone around monetization of incremental AI queries, which to us suggests a lower ad revenue growth trendline than we had anticipated."

The firm reduced its price target on Alphabet shares to $332 from $380, still above the stock's latest price of about $280 after its fall of about 13%. UBS rates the shares "neutral."

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October 29, 2026 14:26 ET (18:26 GMT)