Google Search Console Adds Multimodal Filter For Image-Based Searches via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
All Paid Media PPC News Social MediaAdvertising Video Advertising Columns Ask A PPC ExpertNEW PPC Pulse Guide AI Max Invalid Traffic Doubled, Weeks Before Black Friday Invalid traffic on AI Max search doubled to 5.28%. Get the channel-by-channel retail benchmarks before Black Friday. Digital Marketing All Digital Marketing Analytics & Data Ecommerce Lead Generation Content Marketing Social Platforms Google YouTube Reddit LinkedIn TikTokNEW WordPress Other CMS Platforms Guide AI Max Invalid Traffic Doubled, Weeks Before Black Friday Invalid traffic on AI Max search doubled to 5.28%. Get the channel-by-channel retail benchmarks before Black Friday. SEJ Live Webinars Rundowns PodcastNEW Ebooks All Resources Ebook State Of Search 2027 Where search leaders are putting 2027 budget, plus the AI visibility scorecard that replaces session reporting. Search Console is rolling out a multimodal filter for searches that use an image, including Lens and Circle to Search. Query data isn't available for it. SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern September 24, 2026 ⋅ 3 min read SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal Bio Follow 515 READS Google is adding a multimodal filter to Search Console’s Performance report, covering searches where someone used an image as part of the search. The announcement on the Search Central blog says the data includes searches with Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click “Search this image” feature. Google says it’s rolling out globally starting today. The new feature can be found under the Web search type. Google’s updated Performance report help page now divides Web into text-based traffic, which comes from queries typed into the standard search bar, and multimodal, which “includes web search results where an image was used as part of the search.” Harsh Kharbanda, Product Manager Lead for Google Lens, and Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead for Search Console, shared their insights: “This update is designed to give you insights into how your content is surfaced when users search using images (such as with a smartphone camera).” The metrics show up only for sites that get traffic from these searches, according to the post. Google also says multimodal reporting is rolling out to the generative AI performance report, which I covered when it reached all sites on Aug. 31. That report counts impressions, not clicks. Multimodal traffic comes without query data. Google’s dimensions help page explains why: “Because multimodal searches mostly use images rather than text, specific text query data isn’t available for this traffic.” The queries tab isn’t available when you select the multimodal search type. The help page doesn’t list any other dimension as unavailable specifically for multimodal searches. To pull the data out, the post points to the Export button in the report. The Search Analytics API reference, last updated Aug. 11, lists web, image, video, news, Discover, and Google News as report types. It doesn’t list a separate multimodal value for the type parameter. For stores and other sites with product photos, the filter offers a page-level view of what people find when they search using an image, like a phone picture or a screenshot. You can also compare these pages with traffic driven by text searches, broken down by country and device. Without queries, you’re left with pages. A product page with multimodal clicks tells you it was clicked from a search where an image was used as part of the search. It doesn’t tell you what image the person used. The filter’s global rollout began today, so you might not see the option in every property just yet. Google’s post doesn’t specify whether multimodal data includes history from before today or if the split affects existing Web totals. Once your property displays the option, take a moment to compare the new split with a full day’s worth of Web totals. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal Follow on YouTube. Matt G. Southern is the Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal, where he’s covered Google, SEO, ... Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. 12 Important Image SEO Tips You Need To Know Stop Focusing On Google, It's Time to Focus On Being Visible Google's Gemini Decoded: Unveiling The Impact On SEO The AI Search & SEO News That Matters Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.
Source: Search Engine Journal
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