Search Console now shows Lens and photo searches

Search Console can now show you the searches people make with a picture instead of words. Since September 24, a new search type called “Web: multimodal” separates Google Lens, Circle to Search and photo-upload searches from typed ones. This week, open the filter once, export what it shows, and note whether your site gets any of these searches at all. The answer decides what comes next.

Google announced it on the Search Central Blog on September 24: “The data reported here includes searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click ‘Search this image’ feature.” The post, written by the product leads for Google Lens and Search Console, says the data is “rolling out globally starting today.” You can read it in full on the Google Search Central Blog.

What Google added, in plain terms

Until now, a photo search that sent someone to your site was mixed into the Web numbers with everything typed. The Search type filter now splits Web in two. Search Console Help describes the new option this way: “Web: multimodal - Includes search traffic when users search using images (such as with a smartphone camera).”

Four kinds of search count:

• Google Lens, the camera search in the Google app and on many Android phones.
• Circle to Search on Android, where someone circles a thing on their screen.
• Image uploads to Google Search, a saved photo dropped into the search box.
• “Search this image” in Chrome, from the right-click menu.

What Google did not say matters as much. The post gives no figure for how many searches are visual, and it does not say whether earlier months appear in the report. It does say this: “You will start seeing these metrics in your Performance report if your site is receiving traffic from these queries.” A plumber whose customers never photograph a pipe may see nothing, and that is a fair result.

Where the filter is and what to export

In Search Console, open Performance, then Search results. At the top, click the Search type filter and choose Web: multimodal. Set the date range to the widest window the report allows. Then:

1. Read the totals. Clicks and impressions from photo searches, on their own for the first time.
2. Open the Pages tab. This shows which pages people reached after searching with a picture. A menu page, a parts page or a project gallery at the top tells you what people are photographing.
3. Check the same pages under Web: text-based. Switch the filter and note their numbers. A page that gets far more photo traffic than typed traffic is worth a closer look.
4. Click Export. Google’s post says to use it “to download the data and analyze it in your other tools.” The download carries both the chart and the table; Search Console Help notes that values shown as ~ or - come out as zeros.

Then repeat the filter in the Generative AI performance report, which counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Help for that report lists the same Web: multimodal option, so you can see whether your site appeared in AI answers to photo searches.

Which local businesses should look first

Anyone who sells something a customer can point a phone at. Some trades come up more than others:

Business	What a customer might photograph	Where to look in the export
Restaurants and bakeries	A dish at a nearby table, a menu board, the storefront	Menu and location pages
Parts and repair shops	A broken part, an appliance model plate, a worn belt	Parts, brand and repair pages
Retailers	A product on a shelf or on someone else	Product and category pages
Contractors	A water stain, a cracked tile, a sagging deck board	Service pages and project galleries

Contractors are the quiet case. Someone who photographs a ceiling stain is looking for the cause, not a company. A contractor whose site shows real jobs, each photo described (“ceiling stain below a failed bathroom shower pan, before the repair”), gives that search somewhere useful to land.

Why real, well-described photos matter

Google tells site owners how it reads an image, and none of it is new; this report just lets you see whether it is working. Its image guidance says Google “extracts information about the subject matter of the image from the content of the page, including captions and image titles,” and asks that images sit “near relevant text and on pages that are relevant to the image subject matter.”

Three habits follow from that:

• Describe each photo in its alt text. Say what is in it: the dish and its sauce, the part and its number, the room and the damage.
• Rename files before uploading. Google’s own example prefers my-new-black-kitten.jpg over IMG00023.JPG. A file called brake-caliper-ford-f150.jpg tells it something; photo3.jpg tells it nothing.
• Use your own photos. A stock picture of a generic burger is the same picture on a hundred sites. Your plate, your shelf and your finished job are not.

The Business Profile follows the same logic. Google’s photo guidelines for profiles ask for pictures that are “in focus and well lit” with no heavy filters, and put it simply: “the image should represent reality.” JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, at 720 by 720 pixels where you can. A profile with current photos of the room, the counter and the work matches what a customer sees when they arrive, and what they might photograph.

Check it this week

• Open Performance, set Search type to Web: multimodal, and write down clicks and impressions.
• Export the Pages tab and keep the file as your baseline.
• Run the same filter in the Generative AI performance report.
• Pick the five photos on your busiest page and rewrite their alt text to say what is in them.
• Upload three fresh, unfiltered photos to your Business Profile: the front, the inside and the work.

Checking it yourself or with us

Every step above is something an owner can do alone, for free. If you would rather hand it over, here is what changes:

	On your own	With Beyaoshy
What it costs to start	Nothing; Search Console is free	Nothing; the first consult is free
Who does the work	You or your staff	One team, nothing subcontracted
Whose name the site and profile are in	Yours	Still yours, set up in your name
What you keep	Your export	A written plan, whether or not you hire us

Our local SEO work covers the site photos and the profile together, and the page for business owners explains how the free plan works. Send your website through the form below, and we will run the multimodal filter with you and tell you which photos to fix first.