On September 24, 2026, Google announced web multimodal reporting in Search Console, its dashboard for how your site shows up in search. “Multimodal” is Google’s word for searches that use an image. The new data includes searches made with Google Lens (pointing your phone’s camera at something to search it), Circle to Search on select Android phones, image uploads to Google Search, and Chrome’s right-click option to search an image.
The numbers show up in two reports: the Performance report for Search results and the Generative AI performance report. Google says it’s rolling out globally starting September 24, and the data only appears if your site gets traffic from these searches.
This is the first time Search Console lets you see when people found you by searching with a photo. People search that way when they don’t have the words for what they’re looking at. Someone might point their camera at a corroded fitting under the sink to find out what it is and who fixes it. Someone else might circle a light fixture in a photo on their phone to see where to buy one.
How to check whether photo searches reach your site
Open Search Console, choose your site, and go to the Performance report for Search results. Click the search type filter and pick the “Web: multimodal” option. Google’s help page for that report describes it as web results “where an image was used as part of the search.” The other web option is “Web: text-based” for the usual searches typed into the Google search bar. Don’t confuse multimodal with the “Image” option in the same filter. That’s a separate search type.
With the multimodal filter on, check clicks (times someone clicked through to your site) and impressions (times your site showed up in results). Then open the Pages tab to see which pages turned up and which got clicked. The Export button downloads the data if you want a copy.
Next, open the Generative AI performance report and set the same filter. It shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google’s AI features in Search, for searches that used an image. It counts impressions only, with no clicks or search terms, and it may not appear at all for sites without enough impressions in those features.
If you don’t see the multimodal option, or both reports come up empty, your site may not be getting these searches yet, or the rollout may not have reached it. Check again in a few weeks.
You won’t see what they searched for
For typed searches, the Queries tab lists the search terms that led people to your site. With “Web: multimodal” selected, you get no search terms at all. Google’s page on the report’s dimensions explains why: these searches mostly use images rather than text, so that data isn’t available.
So you work backward from the page. On your phone, open each page that got multimodal clicks and ask what the person was probably looking at when they searched. On a page full of photos from real jobs, you can usually guess. If you can’t tell, the page isn’t clear about what it covers, and someone holding a photo won’t know if they’re in the right place.
Make those pages work for someone holding a photo
Think about who’s arriving. They know what the thing looks like, maybe not its name, and they want to know quickly whether you deal with it. Here’s what we’d do, with Google’s image best practices where they apply:
- Use real photos of your own work or products. A stock shot of a smiling technician doesn’t look like anything someone would point a camera at.
- Put each photo next to the text that explains it, with a caption that names the thing in plain words. Google says it gets information about what an image shows from the page’s content, including captions and image titles.
- Fill in the alt text, the short written description attached to an image. Google says it’s the most important extra information you can give an image, and it helps people who use screen readers. Describe what’s in the photo instead of cramming in keywords.
- Rename photos before you upload them. File names are only a light clue for Google, but water-heater-install.jpg still tells it more than IMG_4471.jpg.
- Keep photos sharp without making them huge. Google points out that images are often the biggest part of a page’s size, which can slow the page down.
Then check the top of the page on your phone. Pointing a camera and circling something on screen both happen on a phone, and the Devices tab in the same report shows how many of these clicks came from phones. A tap-to-call button or a short form should be right there, no scrolling or hunting.
Check whether those pages turn into calls and leads
Search Console stops at the click. It won’t tell you whether anyone called or filled out a form. Part of that answer lives in your CRM, the system that holds your leads and customer records.
For each page that got multimodal clicks, count the form leads it produced over the same dates, plus calls if you track them by page. Those counts include leads from everyone who reached the page, not only people who searched with a photo, so treat them as a rough check. It only works if your forms record which page each lead came from. If your forms don’t feed a CRM today, that’s part of what we build at Glory: landing pages that connect directly to your CRM, so every form lead lands in one place you can count.
Once you know which pages get these visits, give multimodal clicks their own line in your weekly marketing dashboard, so you can see whether a page fix moves anything.
This week, run the “Web: multimodal” filter, export the page list, and pull up the top page on your phone. If you can’t tell within a few seconds what it’s about and how to call you, fix that page first.
Source note: Based on Google’s Search Central Blog announcement of web multimodal reporting in Search Console (September 24, 2026); Search Console Help pages for the Search results performance report, its dimensions, and the Generative AI performance report; Google’s image best practices; and Google’s Circle to Search and Lens pages. Search Console doesn’t show search terms for multimodal searches, and the Generative AI performance report counts impressions only, with no clicks or search terms. The page and CRM checks are Glory Digital Solutions’ own guidance.