Google Unveils Multimodal Search Filter for Website Owners

Google has introduced a multimodal search filter in Search Console, allowing website owners to see how their content performs when people use an image as part of a web search. The update covers searches made through Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and Chrome's 'Search this image' feature.

The multimodal search filter is available in the Search results performance report and the Generative AI performance report. According to Google's announcement, the rollout starts globally on September 24th. Sites receiving traffic from these searches should begin seeing the data in their Performance reports.

This new feature gives affiliate publishers a way to investigate how visually led products perform, check reviews and buying guides where appearance matters, and compare search performance. The filter shows impressions and clicks from multimodal web searches, but it does not identify which image prompted a particular result or show whether a visitor later made a purchase.

The new filter answers a different question than previous reporting: how web content performs when someone uses an image as part of their search. For affiliate publishers, that visibility is useful, but it's not a sales figure. Search Console can show which pages gain impressions and clicks from multimodal searches, but teams still need on-site analytics and affiliate reporting to assess whether those pages contribute to commercial results.