Search Console adds a multimodal search type. Query data is missing from it

Google began the worldwide rollout on 24 September 2026. The multimodal search type covers visits that started with a picture instead of typed words.

The filter sits in the Performance report, under the Web search type. It gathers traffic from Google Lens, from Circle to Search on Android phones, from images uploaded into Google Search, and from the right-click “Search this image” option in Chrome. Until now all of that sat inside one Web total, with no way to pull it apart.

Lens and Circle to Search now have their own line in the report

Site owners get clicks, impressions and average position for the new segment, plus the usual splits by page, country and device. Google is rolling it out to every property that picks up this kind of traffic. There is one gap: the queries dimension goes blank when the multimodal filter is on.

Google says text query data is not available here because these searches lean on the image, not on typed words. Search Engine Journal points out the same limit. That mirrors what happened earlier this year, when Google said it cannot show useful positions for AI search.

Google has spent 2026 cutting the Web total into smaller pieces

This is the second split of the year. In June Google added a report for AI-generated answers, and it finished the worldwide rollout of AI Overviews reporting soon after. Each new slice makes the single Web number less useful on its own.

Product pages and recipes stand to see the biggest share

People reach for Lens when the thing in front of them has no obvious name. A plant, a jacket in a shop window, a part under a car bonnet. Shops, recipe sites and repair guides should expect a larger slice than a news site would.

Open the Performance report next week and compare the multimodal segment against your daily Web total. The size of that gap tells you how much of your search traffic no longer starts with a keyword, and whether your images carry enough on their own.