Google visual search is becoming something website owners can measure rather than simply guess about. Google has added new multimodal search reporting to Search Console, showing when websites receive visibility and traffic from searches that begin with an image rather than a conventional typed query.
That includes searches made with Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, images uploaded directly to Google Search and Chrome’s “Search this image” feature.
For businesses, the important point is not that conventional SEO has suddenly been replaced. It is that the way somebody begins a search is becoming broader. A potential customer may now photograph something, highlight an object on their screen or upload an image and end up discovering a website they may never have found through a traditional keyword search.
What is Google visual search?
Google visual search allows somebody to begin a search using an image rather than relying entirely on text.
Google Lens is probably the most familiar example. A user can photograph an object, use an existing image or select something visible on their screen. Google can then analyse what is shown and return relevant information, similar images, products and websites.
Google’s own guidance on searching with an image explains that results can include information about objects in an image, similar images and websites containing the same or similar imagery.
This means the searcher’s starting point might not be a phrase such as:
“black outdoor wall light”
They might instead photograph a wall light they have seen outside a restaurant and ask Google to identify something similar.
A person looking at a piece of furniture, plant, item of clothing, machine component, building material or product packaging could do the same thing.
The underlying intent may be very similar to a normal search. What changes is the input.
What has changed in Google Search Console?
Until now, one of the problems with Google visual search was measurement.
Website owners knew that tools such as Google Lens existed, but separating that activity from wider search traffic was difficult.
On 24 September 2026, Google announced a new multimodal search type filter within Search Console’s performance reporting.
According to Google’s Search Central announcement, the new reporting covers searches made through:
- Google Lens;
- Circle to Search on Android;
- images uploaded to Google Search; and
- Chrome’s right-click “Search this image” feature.
Google says the reporting is rolling out globally and will begin appearing when a website receives traffic from these types of searches.
The data sits within Search Console’s existing performance reporting rather than requiring businesses to install another tracking platform.
How to check whether Google visual search is finding your website
If the feature has reached your Search Console property and your site has received qualifying traffic, you can use the new multimodal search filter in the Performance report.
That allows you to examine the same kinds of search performance metrics businesses already use in Search Console, including impressions and clicks.
Google’s Search Console Performance documentation explains that the report can be used to analyse how traffic changes over time, which queries surface a website and which pages receive search visibility.
There is an important distinction, though.
Seeing multimodal search traffic does not necessarily mean Google is telling you that one specific website image ranked because somebody photographed an identical object.
The report tells you that the search interaction was multimodal. Google can use the image, the objects it recognises, surrounding context and potentially additional text from the user to produce its results.
So this should be treated as another useful source of search-performance data, not as a perfect reconstruction of everything Google Lens understood about the image.
Does this mean businesses need a new “visual SEO” strategy?
Not necessarily.
There will inevitably be attempts to turn Google visual search into an entirely new branch of SEO with its own enormous checklist.
Google’s current guidance is much less dramatic.
The company already recommends making images easy for Google to discover and understand. Its image SEO best-practice documentation focuses on fundamentals such as using crawlable HTML image elements, placing images on relevant pages, using descriptive alt text, providing useful surrounding content and serving high-quality images without making pages unnecessarily slow.
Those practices mattered before the new Search Console report existed.
The reporting simply gives businesses a better opportunity to see whether visual search is actually becoming part of the way people discover their content.
What should you optimise for Google visual search?
If Google visual search is relevant to your business, there are several sensible things worth checking.
Use images that actually show the subject clearly
A generic stock photograph may make a page look finished, but it does not necessarily provide much useful visual information about what the business sells or discusses.
Where images are important to the subject, use clear photographs or illustrations that genuinely represent it.
For an ecommerce business that could mean accurate product photography from useful angles. For a trades business it might mean genuine examples of materials, finishes or completed work. For a manufacturer it might mean clearly photographed components or equipment.
This should not be done purely for Google. Better imagery can also help a potential customer understand what they are looking at.
Give Google visual search useful context
An image sitting on a page without meaningful surrounding information gives search engines less context than an image embedded within a page that clearly explains the subject.
Google specifically recommends placing images near relevant text.
That means a photograph of a particular product should ideally appear alongside accurate information about that product rather than being buried inside a generic gallery with almost no explanation.
Write useful image alt text
Alt text primarily exists to describe an image for people who cannot see it, including users relying on screen readers.
It can also help search engines understand an image.
Good alt text should describe what is genuinely visible rather than becoming somewhere to repeat keywords.
For example:
Poor:
SEO visual search Google visual search best Google visual search SEO image
Better:
Black aluminium outdoor wall light mounted beside a front door
The second description is more useful to both a person and a search engine because it describes the image rather than trying to manipulate it.
Use descriptive image filenames where practical
Google says filenames can provide light clues about what an image contains.
A filename such as:
black-aluminium-wall-light.webp
is therefore more informative than:
IMG_4827.webp
This is not something we would expect to transform search performance by itself. It is simply another piece of useful context.
Make sure Google can actually access your images
The basics still matter.
Google recommends using standard HTML image elements so its crawlers can discover images. Images loaded only as CSS backgrounds are not treated in the same way for indexing purposes.
Image quality also needs to be balanced against performance. Huge uncompressed photographs might look excellent but can unnecessarily slow a page down.
Good image optimisation therefore means keeping enough quality for the image to be useful while delivering it efficiently.
Google visual search could matter particularly for product businesses
The significance of visual search will not be equal for every website.
A bookkeeping company, for example, is unlikely to receive the same kind of visual discovery opportunities as a furniture retailer, fashion brand or parts supplier.
For ecommerce businesses, the relationship is much more obvious.
Google specifically says that businesses wanting products to be discoverable in Google Lens should provide their product information through Merchant Center, opt in to relevant product listings and follow Google’s image best practices.
This means product feeds, accurate product information and strong photography can increasingly work together rather than existing as completely separate parts of ecommerce SEO.
Don’t confuse visual search with Google Images
Google Images and multimodal search are related, but they are not identical.
Someone using Google Images may still begin with a conventional text query and then browse image results.
Someone using Google visual search can begin with the image itself.
That distinction matters when looking at Search Console data because it tells us something about search behaviour, not merely whether Google displayed an image thumbnail.
The new reporting therefore provides another view into how a search started.
What can Google visual search data actually tell a business?
The first temptation with any new Search Console report is to watch the number and immediately start trying to increase it.
That is not necessarily useful.
A business should first ask whether visual discovery makes sense for its customers.
If multimodal impressions and clicks begin appearing, look at which pages are receiving them. That could expose products, guides or categories of content that people naturally search for visually.
Then compare that behaviour with the commercial purpose of those pages.
A thousand visual impressions have limited value if they attract people with no realistic connection to what the business provides. A much smaller number of highly relevant product discoveries could be considerably more useful.
The same principle applies to Search Console generally: visibility is useful information, but it is not the same thing as a business result.
This is another sign that search is becoming less text-only
The bigger development is not one new filter inside Search Console.
It is that Google is increasingly giving website owners visibility into search experiences that do not look like the traditional ten blue links and typed keyword query.
We saw a similar shift when Google introduced more dedicated reporting around its generative AI search experiences. We covered that separately in our article on measuring website visibility in Google’s AI search.
Multimodal reporting now gives businesses another piece of that picture.
The practical response is not to abandon conventional SEO or invent a separate strategy every time Google releases a new search interface.
It is to make sure your website gives Google strong material to work with: useful pages, clear subject matter, accessible and relevant images, accurate product information where applicable and technically sound pages that can be crawled and understood.
Then use the new data to see whether customer behaviour is actually changing.
Should you change your SEO because of Google visual search?
For most businesses, not dramatically.
If your website already uses strong, relevant imagery, descriptive alt text, clear page content and sensible technical SEO, much of the foundation is already there.
What has changed is measurement.
Google visual search traffic can now become something you identify in Search Console, analyse and compare with the rest of your organic visibility.
For businesses where customers naturally identify, compare or discover things visually, that data could become increasingly useful.
For everyone else, it is still worth watching before reorganising an SEO strategy around it.
At Nort Labs, our SEO work is built around how customers actually find and use a website rather than chasing every new search feature in isolation. Visual search is another behaviour worth measuring — and now Google is finally giving businesses better data to do that.
