Developing
Sites with image-heavy content get a first look at traffic that starts with a photo instead of a typed query.
In 60 seconds
- On September 24, 2026 Google announced web multimodal search reporting in Search Console.
- It shows how content surfaces when people search with images, including Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads and Chrome's "Search this image".
- A multimodal search-type filter appears in the performance report and the data also feeds the Generative AI features report.
- It rolls out globally to sites that receive this traffic.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- Traffic from camera and image searches, previously hidden, can now be filtered in Search Console.
- Why it matters
- Visual search is growing and sites had no way to see its share, which makes it hard to value image and product photography work.
- Who is affected
- Ecommerce, travel, recipe and other image-led publishers, and their SEO teams.
- Martech stack area
- Analytics, SEO & Search
- Stack impact
- Add the multimodal filter to monthly reporting and compare it with web and image search for the same pages.
- Business impact
- Low The Google post's full text was not available to us; some details come from SEO news summaries.
- What to watch
- How large this traffic is for your pages, and whether more detail such as query samples is added.
On September 24, 2026, Google announced web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console on the Search Central blog.
What is reported
- Searches that start with an image: Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click “Search this image” feature.
- A new multimodal search-type filter in the performance report on Search results, and data in the Generative AI features report.
- The rollout is global. Sites that receive traffic from these queries see the data.
Our read
Image and camera searches have been a blind spot: they arrive as visits but not as a labelled source. Having a filter lets teams see which pages show up when someone points a phone at a product or a place. For ecommerce and travel sites that is a direct signal about which photos and structured product data matter. Add the filter to your reporting and compare it with image and web search for the same pages. The post’s full text was not available to us in the form we read, so check the details on Google’s page.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console (opens in a new tab)
The announcement. The page text we received was truncated, so the date, searches included and rollout come from the search summaries of it and from Search Engine Roundtable.
- Search Engine Roundtable: video recap, September 25, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Confirms that multimodal filters were added to performance reports.