Search Console now counts camera searches. Don’t rebuild if the chart jumps
Someone points a phone at a name card or a booth wall. Lens runs. Until this month those visits were mixed into Web, or missing. On 24 September Google Search Central added a multimodal filter in the Search performance report and in the generative-AI report: Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads, Chrome’s “search this image”.
Search Engine Journal put it in the same week as the spam update. Once the filter exists, the performance line can look shorter or taller. That is not automatically a penalty. Google may only have moved image searches that used to sit inside Web into the multimodal bucket.
If the person who reads the report sees the line jump, they should not ask anyone to take the site apart. Keep the same date range. Read the Web filter, then the multimodal filter, and set the two impression counts next to each other. If what left Web shows up under multimodal, the split is the story: Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads, and Chrome’s search-this-image were pulled out of the old Web number. If both filters fall together, look for another cause. Do not read a change of bucket as the whole site being in trouble.
What a small firm will actually see
Suppose a guest photographs your booth wall, or long-presses a screenshot of the site inside a chat and searches from that image. If Google matches the image to your page, that visit can show up later under the multimodal filter. We do not publish many photos, so this column will probably stay empty for a while. Leave it empty. The person reading the report does not need to refresh it every week while waiting for a number that will not appear on its own.
Aleyda posted the new GSC filter the same day. Tools change. The order of checks can stay fixed. Look first at text search, for people typing the brand and the service. Use multimodal as the column beside that. Do not flip the order and rewrite text-search titles because an image column is still empty.
Photos, without a new product name
The person who changes the photos is the person who already edits the site, not a new package named Lens SEO. Office shots and case images, the ones a guest might photograph or screenshot, need a caption. Rename the file into words a person can read. Do not leave IMG_3829.jpg as the only clue. The paragraph beside the image should say which place or which job it is. Search matches the picture back to your page from those words, not from a new photo shoot ordered for the report. A service page with no photos does not need a shoot just for this filter.
- Office and case photos need a caption, not an image file with no words
- Use a file name a person can read, so
IMG_3829.jpgis not the only clue - The paragraph next to the image should say what the picture is, so the page can match that search
- If a new line appears on the chart, switch to the multimodal filter and check whether that column just started counting
Our September export is still ordinary Web search. The new filter shows numbers only after someone reaches the site with an image search. The person reading the report should not treat an empty multimodal column as image search having failed.
FAQs
Do we need a huge photo library to appear here?
No. If nobody searches with a camera or a screenshot of your site, the multimodal row stays empty. Empty does not mean Google is penalizing the site, and it does not mean you must stock a warehouse of product photos first.
Will we see the keywords people used?
Usually not. Google says these searches are mostly an image, not a sentence, so the query column is often blank. The person reading the report should look at pages, countries, and devices, and should not keep refreshing in hope of a keyword.
Should we buy a “Lens SEO” package?
Not yet. Have the person who edits the site write the caption, the file name, and the paragraph next to the photo. A service page with no photos does not need a new shoot for this report.
Review photos and captions Structure
Sources: Google Search Central, 24 Sep 2026; SEJ Pulse.