Search Console Now Reports Web Multimodal Search: What Local Businesses Should Check After Google's September 24 Announcement

Short answer: On Thursday, September 24, 2026, Google published “Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console” on the Search Central Blog. Search Console now reports on web multimodal search, meaning searches where people use an image instead of typing, in both the performance report for Search results and the report for Generative AI features. The data includes Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and Chrome's right-click “Search this image.” You see it by choosing the new multimodal search type filter, and you can export it. Google says the data is rolling out globally starting September 24 and will appear if your site gets traffic from these queries.

What Google Announced

The post opens by saying that understanding how users find your content is crucial, and that as Search evolves to include more visual and multimodal experiences, Google wants site owners to have the data they need to analyze performance. The concrete announcement is Search Console reporting for web multimodal search.

Google says the reporting appears in two places: the report for performance on Search results, and the report for Generative AI features. The stated purpose is to give insight into how your content is surfaced when users search using images, with a smartphone camera as the example.

The post names four sources of the data:

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

How to Find the Data in Search Console

According to Google, you use the new multimodal search type filter in the performance reports. Google's image in the post is captioned “Search Console's new multimodal filter report.” To take the data elsewhere, Google says to click Export and analyze it in your other tools.

1. Open your website property in Search Console and go to the Performance report for Search results.
2. Open the search type setting and choose the multimodal option, if it is available for your property yet.
3. Repeat in the Generative AI features report, which Google says also carries the multimodal reporting.
4. Use Export to save a dated copy, so you have a baseline to compare against later.

If the option or the data is not there, do not panic. Google says the data is rolling out globally starting September 24, 2026, and that you will start seeing the metrics if your site is receiving traffic from these queries. A small local site may simply have little image-based search traffic, and the post gives no completion date for the rollout.

What the Announcement Does Not Say

For a primary-source brief, the gaps matter as much as the news. Based on the text of the September 24 post, Google does not state:

• Which specific metrics are shown for the multimodal filter. The post says “these metrics” without listing them.
• How far back the data goes, or whether any history is backfilled.
• Whether the new filter is available in the Search Console API. The post mentions Export only.
• When the global rollout will finish, or whether it reaches all properties at once.
• Any minimum traffic threshold, beyond saying data appears if your site receives traffic from these queries.
• How multimodal data relates to the existing Image search type, or whether a visit can be counted in more than one view.
• Anything about Google Business Profile, Maps, or ranking changes. This is a reporting update, not an announced ranking change.

RankEasy will not fill those gaps with guesses. If Google updates its Search Console Help documentation with more detail, we will update this page and note the date.

Why This Matters for Local Service Businesses

Until now, most local businesses have had no clean way to see whether people who searched with a photo ever landed on their website. The new filter gives that a place in Search Console. Whether it matters for a specific business depends on whether customers in that trade are likely to search by pointing a camera at something.

Some examples of situations where that is at least plausible, offered as hypotheses to check in your own data, not as findings from Google:

• Pest control: a homeowner photographs an insect or droppings to identify it.
• Plumbing and HVAC: someone photographs a water heater label, a leaking fitting, or a thermostat error screen.
• Roofing and siding: a homeowner photographs storm damage or a material they want matched.
• Landscaping and tree service: someone photographs a plant, a diseased tree, or a weed.
• Garage doors, locksmiths, appliance repair: photos of a part, a lock, or a model plate.

If your site has pages that explain those problems, with real photos, it is possible they already appear for image-based searches. The multimodal filter is how you find out. If the filter shows nothing for months after rollout, that is also useful: it tells you not to spend budget chasing a channel your customers are not using.

How to Read the Data Once It Appears

These are RankEasy's recommendations for reading the new view. They are not instructions from Google.

1. Start with pages, not queries. Look at which URLs receive multimodal traffic. For a local business, that usually tells you more than the query list, because it shows which services or problems people are photographing.
2. Compare against your normal Web view. Put the same date range side by side with the standard web search type. Pages that do well in multimodal but not in text search can point to strong visuals with thin supporting copy, and vice versa.
3. Check the Generative AI features report too. Google says multimodal reporting also appears there. If you already track AI feature visibility, add the multimodal view to that routine.
4. Export a monthly baseline. Because the post does not say how much history is kept, export early and on a schedule so you control your own record.
5. Do not over-read small numbers. A handful of clicks is not a trend. Wait for several weeks of data before changing strategy.
6. Separate website data from Business Profile data. Photos on a Google Business Profile have their own reporting. This announcement is about your website property.

What to Check on Your Site

Google's post says the new data should help site owners “optimize your visual content,” but it does not publish new optimization guidance. The durable reference is Google's existing Image SEO best practices documentation, which covers things like descriptive filenames, alt text, placing images near relevant text, and image sitemaps. For a local service site, RankEasy would check:

• Real photos over stock. Photos of your actual trucks, crews, jobs, and results are more specific to what customers are photographing than generic stock images.
• Descriptive filenames and alt text. “tankless-water-heater-install-montclair.jpg” says more than “IMG_4412.jpg.”
• Images next to the text that explains them. A photo of a failed sump pump belongs on the page that explains sump pump failure, with a caption.
• Crawlable images. Make sure images are not blocked by robots.txt and load for Googlebot.
• Image sitemap if you have many job photos. Google's docs describe image sitemaps as a way to help it discover images it might not otherwise find.
• Page speed. Large, uncompressed images slow pages down. See our Core Web Vitals guide.

None of this is new because of the September 24 announcement. What is new is that you can now see in Search Console whether image-based searches are reaching your site, which makes it easier to decide whether image work deserves priority for your business.

What RankEasy Is Doing for Clients

• This week: checking each client property for the multimodal filter and exporting a first snapshot where data exists.
• Monthly reporting: adding a multimodal line to client reports once there is enough data to be meaningful, alongside the standard web view we already cover in our local SEO tracking guide.
• Content decisions: using multimodal page data to decide which service pages get better photos first.
• What we are not doing: claiming multimodal traffic is a ranking factor, promising multimodal results, or quoting numbers Google did not publish.

Feedback Channels Google Named

Google asks for feedback through the “Submit feedback” link in Search Console or in the Google Search Central Community. If the filter behaves unexpectedly for your property, those are the channels Google named.

Sources

• Google Search Central Blog — Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console (posted Thursday, September 24, 2026, by Harsh Kharbanda and Moshe Samet).
• Search Console Help — Generative AI performance report (Search) and Performance report: search type (linked from Google's post).
• Google Search Central documentation — Image SEO best practices.
• RankEasy related reading: SCL Deep Dive Europe 2026 speakers, SCL India 2026 Bengaluru, AI search optimization, video SEO for home services.

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