Search Console splits web results into text and multimodal

Search Console now shows how much of your web performance comes from searches that start with an image. The Performance report separates those from text searches, using data that was not part of web reporting before. Google announced the change on 24 September 2026 and said it is rolling out globally from that day.

What changed in the Performance report?#

The search type filter now splits web results into two groups. Google’s Performance report help defines Web: Text-based as traditional search traffic from text queries entered into the standard Google search bar, and Web: Multimodal as web search results where an image was used as part of the search.

Multimodal is new data, not a relabel of something already reported. John Mueller of Google told Search Engine Roundtable that the data was not previously in the counts. It is a Search Console change that also touches AI search visibility: Google says the multimodal data appears in the Performance report for Search results and also in the report for Generative AI features, which we covered in Search Console’s AI feature reports.

Which searches count as multimodal?#

Google’s announcement lists searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click “Search this image” feature. In Google’s words, the goal is to show how content is surfaced when users search using images, such as with a smartphone camera. For what Google has said publicly about how much Lens is used, see our Google Lens search volume report.

Why is there no query data?#

Google says that because multimodal searches mostly use images rather than text, specific text query data is not available. Expect impressions and clicks for this type, but an empty Queries view.

When will you see it?#

Google says you will start seeing these metrics in your Performance report if your site is receiving traffic from these queries. A site with no image-led search traffic will simply have nothing to show, which is not an error. The announcement does not say the data is backfilled, so do not read a rise from zero on 24 September as growth.

What should site owners do with it?#

Filter the report by each web type and compare. Google suggests using Export to download the data and analyze it in other tools, which is the simplest way to put text-based and multimodal side by side over time. Google frames the data as a way to optimize your visual content, so the pages that earn multimodal traffic are a sensible starting point for image work, such as an image alt text audit. This article does not state metric values, because the sources do not give them.