Search Console's Multimodal Filter: How to Read Image-Led Traffic

Google Search Console started reporting web multimodal search performance on Thursday, September 24, 2026. The update lives in the Performance report for Search results and in the Generative AI features report.

The point is simple. People search with cameras and screenshots as well as typed keywords. Until this filter, that traffic was hard to isolate. Google says the multimodal counts are new. They were not inside the older Web totals.

You will only see metrics if your property is getting traffic from these image-led searches. Do not assume every site already has a chart full of multimodal rows.

What "Web multimodal" includes

Google's Search Central post lists four sources for this filter:

• Google Lens
• Circle to Search on Android
• Image uploads to Google Search
• Chrome's right-click "Search this image"

Search Console help text frames the same idea: Web multimodal covers web results where an image was part of the search. Text-only queries stay under Web text-based.

You will not see the photo the user submitted. John Mueller's note on the rollout is the useful mental model: if your site is image-heavy, you can see which pages showed up and how often. You do not get the query image itself.

Where to find it

Open Search Console Performance.

1. Use the Search type filter at the top of the report.
2. Under Web, choose Multimodal (UI labels may read "Web multimodal" or "Multimodal" depending on the property view).
3. Check both places Google named: Search results and Generative AI features.

Then use the dimensions that still work: Pages, Countries, Devices, and Dates. Export if you want the rows in a spreadsheet or your own dashboard.

The hard limit: no Queries dimension

Multimodal searches are mostly image-led. Google's help docs say specific text query data is not available for this traffic, so the Queries dimension drops out when Multimodal is selected.

That is the operational difference from classic Web reporting. You can still answer:

• Which URLs get multimodal impressions and clicks
• Which countries and devices drive them
• How the trend moves day to day or week to week

You cannot answer "which typed query string caused this click" for this slice. Do not pad a client deck with invented query lists for Lens or Circle to Search traffic.

How to use it on photo-heavy local and service sites

For local and service businesses, the useful pages are usually the ones with real project photos: before-and-after galleries, job-site shots, product close-ups, team or facility photos that show up in Lens-style matches.

A practical weekly pass:

1. Filter Performance to Web multimodal. Confirm you have any data at all. Empty is a valid answer for many properties right after rollout.
2. Sort Pages by clicks, then impressions. Note which URLs already attract image-led discovery.
3. Cross-check Countries and Devices. Camera-led discovery often skews mobile. That should change how you review image quality, file weight, and above-the-fold photo choice on those URLs.
4. Export the page list. Keep a short changelog of which photo-led URLs move after you refresh alt text, filenames, and on-page image context. You still will not get the query string, so treat page-level movement as the signal.
5. Compare Multimodal against Web text-based for the same date range. Mueller confirmed multimodal counts were not previously inside Web totals, so a drop in classic Web is not automatically "traffic moved into Multimodal." Treat the two filters as separate series unless Google later says otherwise.

On the page side, stick to basics that already matter for visual discovery: clear subject photos, descriptive filenames, accurate alt text, and captions that name the service, location, and material when those facts are real. Do not invent traffic lifts from this filter. Use it to see whether image-led discovery is already happening, and which URLs carry it.

What this is not

This is Search Console reporting for image-led web results. It is not Google's September spam update, and it is not a promise that every property will show multimodal rows on day one.

Google is rolling the integration out globally from September 24. Metrics appear when the site receives traffic from these searches. If Multimodal is empty, keep watching Pages and Dates rather than forcing a narrative.

Sources

• Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console (Google Search Central, Sep 24, 2026)
• Multimodal search type filter in Google Search Console (Search Engine Roundtable)