On September 24, 2026, Google added a multimodal search type to the Search Console performance report. It splits your web traffic into text-based searches and visual searches from Google Lens, Circle to Search, and image uploads. For most nonprofits, this is a diagnostic, not a new channel to chase.
The short version
- Search Console (SC) added a "multimodal" search type covering Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and Chrome's right-click "Search this image."
- It reports impressions and clicks but no query data, because the search starts with an image rather than words.
- Nonprofits with heavy event, program, and people photography will see the most volume here.
- Use it to fix image search engine optimization (SEO) fundamentals, not to rebuild your content strategy.
What Google actually shipped
The change is a new filter, not a new algorithm. In the Search Console performance report, the search type control that used to read "Web" now lets you separate results into text-based and multimodal. Google's own description is plain: "Web-multimodal tracks search results triggered by a query that uses an image, photo, or screenshot. Text-only queries are tracked as Web text-based." It began rolling out globally on September 24, 2026, and it covers four surfaces: Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the "Search this image" option in Chrome. If your nonprofit's site is getting any of that traffic, it now has a home in the report instead of being folded silently into your Web totals. Google documented the change on the Search Central blog.
Why there is no query data, and why that is fine
The one thing everyone wants from this report is the one thing it will not give you: the words people used. When you select the multimodal search type, the queries dimension disappears. Google's explanation is straightforward: "Because multimodal searches mostly use images rather than text, specific text query data isn't available for this traffic." Someone pointing their camera at your event flyer or circling a photo on a partner's site did not type anything, so there is no keyword to report. What you do get is impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position, broken out by page, country, and device. That is enough to answer the only questions worth asking at this stage: which of my pages surface in visual search, and is anyone clicking through.
Who this actually matters for
Nonprofits are, quietly, some of the most image-dense sites on the web. When I audit a nonprofit's site, the pages carrying the most organic weight are rarely the polished service pages. They are the ones full of real photography: a food-relief org's distribution-day galleries, a cultural-arts nonprofit's performance archive, an advocacy group's rally and testimony images, a professional association's headshots and event recaps. Those assets get saved, screenshotted, and pointed at by Google Lens far more than a text page ever does, and until this week that visibility was invisible in your reporting. If your programs are visual, this report is where you will finally see whether Google is putting your images in front of people. If your site is mostly text and PDFs, expect the multimodal line to stay near zero, and do not read that as a problem to solve.
What to do in the next 30 minutes
Open the report and look before you plan anything. Go to Search Console, open the Performance report, click the search type filter, and choose Multimodal. Compare it against text-based for a full day of data so you can see how the split nets out against your Web totals. Then, if the numbers are non-trivial, spend your effort on image fundamentals that have paid off for years and now have a scoreboard:
- Write descriptive, specific alt text on every meaningful image. This is the single highest-leverage fix, and it doubles as a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) requirement, so it serves your donors who use screen readers at the same time.
- Give images real filenames. A name like 2024-food-drive-houston.jpg tells Google something; IMG_4471.jpg tells it nothing.
- Make sure images are actually crawlable. Aggressive lazy-loading, images injected only by client-side scripts, or assets blocked in robots.txt will keep you out of visual search entirely.
- Serve a high-quality source image. Lens matches on the image itself, so resolution and clarity matter more here than on a text page.
- Add relevant structured data where it fits, so Google understands what the image depicts and where it belongs.
Most of this is work your nonprofit should be doing for accessibility and standard image SEO regardless. The multimodal report just turns it into something you can measure. If you want a hand connecting image work to the rest of your site's technical health, that is the kind of thing I cover as a nonprofit website developer.
What this does not cover
This report tells you about visibility, not outcomes. It will not tell you whether visual-search visitors donated, joined, or bounced. For that you still need Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and your donation platform. It gives you no query data, so do not try to build a keyword strategy from it. It is also separate from your artificial intelligence (AI) search reporting: multimodal is not the same as AI Overviews or AI Mode, and it says nothing about whether ChatGPT or Perplexity cite you. Finally, the data starts thin. This rolled out on September 24, so you will not have months of history to trend against yet. Check it, note your baseline, and come back to it in a quarter.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find the multimodal filter in Search Console?
Open the Performance report, click the search type filter at the top (it defaults to Web), and you will see the option to view text-based and multimodal results separately. If you do not see it yet, it is still rolling out globally, so check again in a few days.
Why can't I see the search terms for multimodal traffic?
Because there usually are no search terms. These searches begin with an image, a photo, or a screenshot rather than typed words, so Google has no text query to report. You get impressions, clicks, CTR, and position, but not keywords.
Was this traffic already counted in my Web totals?
It appears to be a split of your existing Web search traffic rather than a brand-new bucket, which is why Google recommends comparing the new multimodal line against a full day of Web totals when it first appears. That comparison is the fastest way to understand how much of your traffic was visual all along.
Should my nonprofit change its SEO strategy because of this?
No. Treat it as confirmation, not direction. If it shows real visual-search volume, double down on alt text, filenames, and crawlable, high-quality images. If it shows almost nothing, keep investing where your audience actually finds you.
Does this affect AI Overviews or ChatGPT citations?
No. Multimodal search performance is its own report, distinct from Google's AI features and from third-party answer engines. Getting cited in AI answers is a separate discipline with its own reporting.
If you want me to pull your Search Console multimodal numbers and turn them into a short image-SEO punch list your team can actually ship, book a 20-minute read-out.