Google Search Console now reports web multimodal Search performance

On 24 September 2026 Google Search Central announced that Search Console now reports on web multimodal Search performance. The reason they give is plain: Search is evolving to include more visual and multimodal experiences, and they want site owners to have the data to analyse how that performance is going. If you run a site and you check Search Console, there is a new slice of your performance data that did not exist before.

That is the whole confirmed fact. The announcement is short, and I am not going to dress it up with report names, filter labels or metric definitions I have not verified. We have not tested this in a live property yet. So this hack is about doing the one thing that matters the moment a new data source appears: capturing where you stand today, before the numbers have any history.

Why a baseline matters more than the feature itself

Every performance report in Search Console only shows data from the point it starts collecting. If web multimodal Search is a new dimension, you have zero prior context — no way to tell whether next month's number is good, bad, growing or flat. The owners who get value out of a new report are the ones who wrote down the starting point instead of glancing at it once and forgetting.

A new metric with no baseline is just a number you'll argue with yourself about in three months.

So the job this afternoon is not to optimise anything. You cannot optimise a channel you have not measured. The job is to open the report, understand what it is counting for your site, and store a snapshot you can compare against later.

Do this this week

1. Open Search Console and go to your Performance section for the property that matters most — your main website.
2. Look for the new web multimodal Search performance data. Because the exact placement and naming come from Google and I have not confirmed them, open the announcement itself (Google Search Central, 24 September 2026, developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/09/web-multimodal-in-sc) and follow their description to find it.
3. Set the widest date range the report offers so you capture whatever history already exists.
4. Take a screenshot, and if there is an export button, export the raw rows too. Save both with today's date in the filename.
5. Note your top few pages or queries showing in this data, if any are shown. That is your before picture.

What we can and can't tell you yet

Confirmed by the source: the data exists, it covers web multimodal Search, and Google's stated intent is to let you analyse performance as visual and multimodal Search grows. Not confirmed by anything we've verified: how the metric is calculated, whether it is a filter on existing reports or a standalone view, what date range it backfills, or how it maps to clicks and impressions you already track. Anyone telling you those specifics right now is guessing unless they cite Google.

• Snapshot the report today so you have a starting point.
• Re-check in roughly a month with the same date range.
• Read Google's announcement directly for the exact metric definitions.
• Don't change your content strategy off a single week of a fresh report.

Where DIY stops: if this data eventually shows meaningful multimodal traffic and you want to figure out which pages or images are earning it and how to lean into that, that is real analysis work — you'll need several weeks of data and someone comfortable cross-referencing it against your existing Performance reports. This week, none of that is available yet. This week is only about not losing the baseline.