Search Console's New Multimodal Filter, Explained

You open Search Console to check on a slow month and find a new option sitting in the search type menu. Text. Multimodal. You have no idea which one your customers use, and the second one sounds like something a conference invented.

Fair enough. It's a small change with a specific meaning, and most of it comes down to one missing column.

What the multimodal filter counts

Until now, the Web search type in the Performance report lumped everything together. Google has now split it into two parts: text, meaning queries typed or spoken into the search bar, and multimodal, meaning searches where an image was part of the input.

Someone points their phone at a chair in a friend's living room, or circles a jacket in a screenshot, or right-clicks a photo in Chrome and picks "Search this image." Google returns web results. If your page was one of them, that impression now lands in the multimodal bucket instead of disappearing into the general total.

That means the old Web total may look different for a property that gets this traffic. Some of the impressions you used to see as one number are now labeled by how the person searched.

The missing column

Here's the part to read twice. There is no query data for multimodal searches. The Queries dimension is switched off for this type, because the person never typed a query.

What you can see is which pages appeared, in which countries, on which devices, and on which dates. What you can't see is what anyone was looking for. A photo doesn't come with a search phrase.

For a small business, that shapes how much to expect from this report. It's a where and how much report, not a why report. You'll learn that a product page or a service page showed up for image-led searches. You won't learn the words behind them, and no setting will change that.

Who should look at it

Not everyone will have data here. The filter only shows numbers if your site receives this kind of traffic, and Google noted that it may not appear on every property right away. An empty filter is not a warning sign.

It's worth a look if any of these describe you:

• You sell things people can photograph. Furniture, plants, clothing, jewelry, tools, baked goods. Visual search is a natural fit for anything a shopper can point a camera at.
• You run a local business with a distinctive look. A storefront, a menu board, a finished project, a grooming before-and-after. People snap and search.
• You publish original photos rather than the same stock images every competitor uses.

If you run a bookkeeping practice with a text-only site, you'll probably see little or nothing, and that's fine.

How to read what you find

Set the search type to Web, then compare text and multimodal. Three checks are worth ten minutes:

1. Which pages show up in multimodal? If it's your product and service pages, good. If it's a random blog post with one photo in it, you've learned which image is doing work for you.
2. Do the countries and devices make sense? Circle to Search lives on Android, so mobile-heavy results are what you'd expect. A lopsided desktop number would be worth a second look.
3. Is the volume big enough to matter? For most small sites the answer will be "a sliver." Note the number, come back next quarter, and see whether it moves.

That last one is the whole strategy. A single reading of a brand-new report tells you almost nothing. A reading every three months tells you a trend.

What the trade press says to do about it

The advice across the coverage is unglamorous and consistent: use descriptive file names instead of the camera default, write real alt text, publish original photos, and put enough surrounding text on the page that Google can tell what the image shows. Structured data and image sitemaps come up too. That's the same basic hygiene that's helped image search for years. Nothing here is a new discipline.

If you want the accessibility side of alt text, our post on website accessibility and lawsuits covers why it matters beyond search.

Overreactions to skip

• Rebuilding your image library for visual search. You have no query data and, probably, a sliver of traffic. Fix missing alt text and camera-default file names, and stop there.
• Buying a "multimodal optimization" package. Anyone selling a proprietary method for this has no more data than you do. Nobody outside Google can see the queries either.
• Treating a drop in Web totals as a problem. If your text numbers look different this week, check whether impressions moved into the multimodal bucket before you assume you lost ground.
• Chasing it ahead of the basics. If your Business Profile is stale or your pages don't load fast on a phone, those come first.

This filter also sits beside another new Search Console view. If you haven't seen the AI-side report yet, what Search Console's Generative AI features report shows walks through it with real numbers. Between the two, Google is slowly splitting the old single "Web" number into pieces that match how people search now. For the bigger picture on that shift, start with AEO, the second search.

FAQ

What is the multimodal filter in Search Console?

It's a search type in the Performance report, added September 24, 2026, that isolates web results reached through a search that included an image. That covers Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and Chrome's "Search this image."

Why is there no query data for multimodal searches?

The searcher used a picture instead of typing words, so there's no query to record. The Queries dimension is switched off for this type. You still get pages, countries, devices, and dates.

Why don't I see the multimodal option or any data?

Google said the rollout is global but may not reach every property immediately, and the filter only shows data if your site receives this kind of traffic. Check again in a few days, and don't read an empty filter as a problem.

Will this change my total Web numbers?

It might. Impressions from image-led searches are now labeled separately, so a property that gets this traffic may see its text numbers look a little different from before. That's a labeling change, not evidence that you lost visibility.

Do I need to optimize my images for Lens?

Fix the basics: descriptive file names, real alt text, original photos where you can get them, and context on the page. Beyond that, there's no query data to optimize against, so there's little else to act on yet.

Is multimodal traffic a big deal for small businesses?

For most, it's a small slice today. Businesses selling things people can photograph are the likeliest to see something. The useful move is to note your number now and check it quarterly.

Does this report cover AI Overviews or AI Mode?

No. It covers searches that started with an image. AI-feature impressions live in the separate Generative AI features report.

If keeping an eye on reports like this one isn't how you want to spend your week, that's the job of website care: someone watches Search Console, and you hear about it when something changes that matters.