Search Console Adds Multimodal Search Reporting for Lens, Circle to Search and Image Uploads

Google announced on September 24, 2026 that Search Console now reports on web multimodal search — searches where a user starts with an image rather than typed text. The data appears as a new search type filter in two reports: the Performance report for Search results, and the Generative AI performance report.

The rollout is global and began the same day. Google says you will see the metrics if your site receives traffic from these queries.

What Google says the data includes

According to the announcement on the Google Search Central Blog, the reporting covers searches made with:

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

Google describes the aim as giving publishers "insights into how your content is surfaced when users search using images (such as with a smartphone camera)". The post was written by Harsh Kharbanda, Product Manager Lead for Google Lens, and Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead for Search Console.

How to find it

Both reports get the same control: the search type filter at the top of the report. It now has two web options, according to Google's Search Console Help documentation:

• Web: text-based — "traditional search traffic originating from text queries entered into the standard Google search bar".
• Web: multimodal — "web search results where an image was used as part of the search".

The Performance report documentation lists the full set of search types as web (text-based or multimodal), image, video and news. The Generative AI performance report documentation lists the two web options.

The export button works as it does elsewhere. Google's blog post says to click "Export" to download the data and analyse it in other tools.

What the reports measure

The two reports measure different things, and the new filter inherits each report's definitions.

In the Performance report, the metrics are clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. Google defines impressions there as how many times your site appeared in Search results, and the report's dimensions are queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance and dates.

In the Generative AI performance report, the measure is impressions only. Per Google's documentation, it counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its dimensions are pages, countries, dates and devices. Google notes it does not include data from Search Labs experiments. That report reached all websites worldwide on August 31, 2026, according to the note on its help page.

So a multimodal filter on the first report tells you about clicks and impressions from image-initiated web searches. The same filter on the second tells you about impressions in generative AI features for those searches.

What the limits are

The documentation sets out several limits that carry straight over to this data:

• Row limits still apply. Google says the "usual data limitations (1,000 row limitation, time period, etc)" for the Performance report also apply to the Generative AI report.
• Data can be preliminary. The newest data may still be collecting and "might change in the next few hours", shown as a dotted line on the chart.
• Chart and table totals can differ. This is down to aggregation: by property in the chart, and by page in the table when you group by page.
• Dates are in Pacific Time.
• Volume matters. Google says the data appears "if your site is receiving traffic from these queries". Small sites should not be surprised by an empty view.

What you can and can't conclude

What the announcement establishes is narrow, and it helps to be exact about it.

You can:

• See whether image-initiated web searches send your site any impressions and clicks at all.
• Compare that volume against text-based web search for the same period.
• See which pages appear in multimodal searches, using the pages dimension.
• Filter by device and country to see where these searches originate.

You can't, on the evidence Google has published:

• Tell which of the four sources produced a given impression. Google lists Lens, Circle to Search, image uploads and Chrome's right-click search as included, but says nothing about a breakdown between them. The announcement describes a single search type filter.
• Separate the effect of a specific optimisation. The announcement doesn't say what drives visibility here, and it isn't a ranking guide.
• Compare against the past. The post says the data is rolling out "starting today", and doesn't say Google is backfilling history. Check your date range before drawing a trend line.

That last point is worth taking seriously. A new filter produces a first data point, not a trend. Expect the first few weeks to be a baseline exercise.

Where this sits in Google's Search Console reporting

This is the latest in a run of changes to how Search Console reports on newer search experiences. Google announced the Generative AI performance report in June 2026, and we covered John Mueller's comments on its limits — he said position for these features is "hard to do in a way that makes it useful" and is tracked "as a block". Adding a multimodal filter doesn't change that limitation. It does add a way to split visual-search-driven traffic out of the totals.

What to do with it

1. Open the Performance report, set the search type filter to Web: multimodal, and use a date range of at least the last few weeks.
2. Note the baseline: impressions, clicks and the top pages.
3. Check the same filter in the Generative AI performance report.
4. Export it now. Given the limits above, a saved copy lets you compare against later exports.
5. Look at the top pages. If they are image-led — products, locations, recipes, how-to visuals — check that those pages have clear, crawlable images. If they aren't, treat it as a curiosity and move on.

Sources

• Google Search Central Blog: Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console
• Search Console Help: Performance report (Search results)
• Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report (Search)