Google Search Console visual search reporting is giving website owners a new way to understand how people discover their content through images instead of traditional typed searches.
Google announced the new reporting on September 24, 2026. The update adds a multimodal search type filter to Search Console, allowing publishers and website owners to see performance data from searches that begin with an image.
That includes searches through Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, images uploaded directly to Google Search, and Chrome’s “Search this image” feature.
For bloggers, publishers, affiliate marketers, ecommerce businesses and other website owners, this fills an important measurement gap.
Visual search isn’t new. What is new is having a dedicated way inside Google Search Console to identify how your website is performing in these multimodal searches.
What Changed in Google Search Console?
Google announced the new multimodal reporting through its Search Central blog on September 24, 2026.
According to Google’s official announcement, the information is being added to both the Performance on Search results report and the Generative AI features report in Search Console.
The important addition is a new multimodal search type filter.
Traditionally, website owners have used Search Console to understand things such as:
- How many clicks their pages receive from Google Search
- How many impressions their pages generate
- Which pages receive search traffic
- Which search queries surface their content
- Which countries and devices generate visibility
- Average search position
- Click-through rate
Google’s Search Console Performance report documentation explains these standard metrics in more detail.
Multimodal reporting adds another layer to that analysis.
Instead of looking only at conventional searches, website owners can now isolate performance associated with searches that use an image.
What Is Multimodal Search?
Multimodal search allows someone to search using more than traditional typed words.
An image can become part of the search itself.
For example, someone could photograph an object with a smartphone and use Google Lens to learn more about it.
Someone browsing on Android could use Circle to Search to select something visible on the screen and ask Google to identify or explain it.
A user could also upload an existing image to Google Search.
These interactions are different from someone opening Google and typing a traditional query into the search box.
Google Search increasingly supports both methods.
That creates a challenge for website owners: if people are discovering content through these newer search experiences, how do you know it is happening?
The new Search Console reporting is designed to provide more visibility into that activity.
