Google Lens Traffic Now Shows Up in Search Console: What Photographers Should Look For

Some people find a photographer by typing “boho wedding photographer Asheville” into Google. Others see a photo they love on Instagram, Pinterest, or a friend's phone and want to know who took it, so they point Google Lens at it or circle it on their screen. Until this week, that second kind of visit didn't show up in Google Search Console. Now it does, under a new filter called Multimodal.

This matters more for photographers than for almost any other kind of business, because your photos are what gets searched. Here's what the new filter covers, where to find it, and how to read it without drawing the wrong conclusions.

What “multimodal” means here

Google uses “multimodal” for searches that start from an image instead of typed words. According to Search Engine Roundtable's report on the launch, the new filter covers:

• Google Lens: pointing the camera at something, or opening a saved photo in Lens
• Circle to Search on Android: circling part of whatever is on the screen, including a photo in someone's Instagram feed
• Uploading an image to Google Search
• “Search this image” from the right-click menu in Chrome

This is different from the Image filter that Search Console already had. The Image filter covers people who typed words and browsed Google Images. Multimodal covers people who started with a picture.

This is new data, not relabeled data

Google's John Mueller confirmed that these visits weren't counted anywhere in Search Console before. They weren't hidden inside your Web or Image numbers and haven't been moved out of them. That means two things:

• Your existing numbers don't change. Your Web and Image clicks should look the same as they did last week.
• There's no history to compare against. Multimodal data starts at the rollout (which began September 24, 2026), so you can't compare it with last month or last year yet. Treat the first couple of months as your baseline, not as a trend.

The rollout is gradual, and the numbers build up as searches happen. If you don't see the filter or it shows almost nothing, check again in a week or two before deciding anything.

Where to find it

In Search Console, open Performance and click the Search type filter at the top of the report (it says “Search type: Web” by default). Choose Multimodal from the list. The chart and the tabs below it will switch to showing only image-started searches.

The catch: no keywords

Most people open the Performance report to check the Queries tab. For multimodal traffic, that tab won't help you. Google explains that these searches mostly use images rather than text, so there are no text queries to report. Nobody typed “fine art newborn photographer”; they held up a phone.

So use the other tabs instead. The Pages tab is the most useful one to start with, if it has data for your site. It shows which of your pages people reached through a visual search, and on a photography site that tells you which photos are bringing people in. If one gallery or blog post keeps showing up, the images on that page are the ones people are identifying. That's worth knowing when you choose what goes on your homepage, in your portfolio, or in your next styled shoot.

Why this matters more for photographers

Think about how your work travels. A couple shares their wedding gallery. A planner posts your photos from a venue. A florist puts your image of their centerpiece on Pinterest. Plenty of those posts don't tag you, and every one of them can lead to a visual search. When someone runs a Lens search on your photo, Google looks for pages that show the same image or a close match, and your site can appear in those results.

Until now, you couldn't see any of that. The new filter gives you a rough measure of how often your work is found this way, even though it can't tell you exactly which post someone started from.

How to make your photos easier to find this way

You can't control where your photos end up. You can make sure that when someone does a visual search on one of them, Google can find the original on your site and knows it belongs to you.

• Put your best work on public, indexable pages. Client gallery platforms often hide galleries from search engines on purpose, which is correct for private galleries. It also means those photos only exist on Pinterest and Instagram. Add a selection of your favorites to a public portfolio page or blog post on your own site.
• Surround the photos with real words. Google still reads the page around the image. A blog post that names the venue, the city, and the type of session gives Google context that a gallery with no text doesn't. Our image SEO guide covers file names, alt text, and captions.
• Use real image tags, not decorative backgrounds. Some site themes display photos as CSS background images, which Google generally doesn't index as images. If your hero or portfolio photos are set up that way, they can't appear in visual search results. This comes up most often in heavily customized Showit and WordPress themes.
• Don't block your image folders. Check that your robots.txt doesn't block the folder where your images are stored. Some older security plugins and hotlink-protection settings do this.
• Keep the files fast and properly sized. A large, slow original doesn't help you rank better in visual search, and it slows down the page the visitor lands on. See sizing and compressing photos for the web.

What to do this week

• Open Search Console, switch the Search type to Multimodal, and check whether data is showing up yet.
• If it is, look at the Pages tab and note which pages appear. Then check again in a month.
• Pick one favorite recent session that only exists in a client gallery and on social media, and give it a public blog post on your own site.

It's a small new report, and the numbers will probably look modest at first. It's still the first time Google has shown you how often people find your work by searching with your photos.