Search Console's New Multimodal Filter: What Image-Based Search Traffic Means for You

What did Google just add to Search Console?

On 24 September 2026, Google announced Search Console reporting for “web multimodal search” — a new way to see how your pages perform when someone finds them with an image instead of typed words. The data appears in two places: the regular Performance report for Search results, and the Generative AI features report. Google says the rollout is global and started the same day as the announcement.

The post was written by Harsh Kharbanda, Product Manager Lead for Google Lens, and Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead for Search Console — a pairing that tells you what this really is: Lens-style visual search finally getting its own line item in the tool most site owners already check every week.

What counts as "multimodal" search?

Google’s own definition, from the announcement: the new data “includes searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click ‘Search this image’ feature.” In plain terms, that is any time a person points a camera, circles something on their screen, drops a photo into the search box, or right-clicks an image in Chrome and asks Google what it is or where to find it.

What it is not: typed queries, voice search transcribed to text, or a click coming from a text-based AI Overview. Those all still count as ordinary, text-based Search traffic. Multimodal is specifically the image-first path into a result.

Where do you find the new filter?

Open Search Console, go to the Performance report for Search results, and click the Search type filter. Where that filter used to offer one option called “Web,” it now splits into two: Text-based and Multimodal. Selecting Multimodal shows impressions and clicks for the image-driven traffic on its own, separate from everything else. The same filter has been added to the Generative AI features report, so you can see multimodal activity inside AI Overviews and AI Mode results too.

That missing queries dimension is worth sitting with for a second. If most of your Multimodal impressions come from a handful of product or listing photos, you will see the pages and the impression counts, but not the words a person used to get there — because there usually were not any.

Why did some site owners see impressions move around September 10?

Google backdated the new Multimodal data to 10 September 2026, even though the filter itself only appeared in the interface on the 24th. Several site owners noticed a shift in their total Web impressions starting on that earlier date and, understandably, went looking for a ranking problem. Search Engine Roundtable’s write-up of the change specifically flagged this: some properties showed corresponding drops in web impressions and clicks beginning 10 September, which lines up with the moment Google started separating this data out rather than folding it into the old, single “Web” total.

Two things happened in the same week that can get confused with each other. Google also shipped a September 2026 spam update on 24 September, the same day as this announcement. If your numbers moved that week, check which explanation actually fits — a reporting split is not a penalty, and a spam update is not a reporting change. Conflating the two will send you fixing the wrong problem.

Does this mean you are losing traffic?

Almost certainly not, on its own. If multimodal impressions were never counted inside your old Web totals — and Google’s own framing suggests they were previously invisible rather than double-counted — then pulling them into their own bucket does not remove anything from your text-based numbers. It surfaces data you already had happening on your site that Search Console simply was not itemizing before.

One open question Google has not answered publicly: whether selecting the general “Web” search type today returns text-based traffic only, or text-based plus multimodal combined. Until Google clarifies that, the safest habit is to check Text-based and Multimodal as two separate numbers rather than assume either one is a subtotal of the other.

What should a business owner actually do with this?

1. Open Search Console’s Performance report for Search results and click the Search type filter to confirm you now see Text-based and Multimodal as separate options.
2. Select Multimodal and check the Pages tab — since the queries dimension is not available, pages are how you will see which parts of your site draw image-based traffic.
3. Repeat the same check inside the Generative AI features report, where the identical filter now applies to AI Overviews and AI Mode data.
4. If you saw an impressions shift around 10 September, compare it against the new Multimodal total before assuming a ranking loss or blaming the September spam update.
5. Look at which images are driving the Multimodal impressions you do have — property photos, product shots, headshots — and confirm they carry real, descriptive alt text and are not blocked from indexing.
6. Export the data (the “Export” button Google calls out in the announcement) and save a baseline this week, so next month you have something to compare against.

None of this requires new markup or a new file on your server. It is a reporting change, not a ranking factor, and Google has not said optimizing specifically for “multimodal” requires anything beyond the same fundamentals covered in our broader guide to generative engine optimization: clean, crawlable, well-described content — here, that includes the images.

How does this relate to the Search generative AI setting?

They are different controls that happen to have landed close together. The Search generative AI setting we covered last week decides whether your site is eligible to be cited inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s generative features at all — an on/off switch. The new Multimodal filter is a reporting lens on top of traffic that was already happening; it does not change what you are eligible for, only what you can see. You can be fully included under the generative AI setting and still show zero Multimodal impressions if none of your visitors are searching with images yet, and the reverse is equally possible.