Search Console's web multimodal report helps you examine discovery from visual search inputs. Use it to choose which WordPress images and landing pages deserve attention, not as a reason to add more generic graphics to every post.
Google announced the reporting rollout on September 24, 2026. It covers visual-input experiences including Lens, Circle to Search, uploaded images, and Chrome image search. The announcement describes the filter in both Search results performance and Generative AI features reporting. Availability of meaningful metrics depends on the property's traffic.
Select the Right Report
Open the relevant property in Search Console, choose Performance, and inspect Search type. Where available, select Web and then Multimodal. Image is a separate option. Do not label an Image-search export as a multimodal export merely because both involve pictures.
Record the property, report, search type, selected dates, and last update. Export the data with those labels. Compare equivalent periods only when both contain usable reporting history; a newly available view is not automatically a valid long-term trend series.
Choose a Landing Page Before an Image
Review the Pages table and select a URL that serves a real customer task. Ask what a visually searching person would expect to find there: identify a product, compare a component, understand a screenshot, or follow a repair procedure.
Use this proposed review sheet:
| Field |
Record |
| Landing page |
Canonical public URL |
| Search context |
Exact report and selected search type |
| Observed result |
Reported clicks and impressions, not estimates |
| Image purpose |
What the reader can identify or do |
| Proposed correction |
One specific accessibility, content, or delivery fix |
An impression is not proof that a particular picture caused the appearance. If the report does not identify the asset, do not invent an image-level attribution claim.
Explanatory evidence sheet. Record your own observations.
Audit the Page and Asset Together
Follow Google's image guidance: make relevant images discoverable and provide useful surrounding context and descriptive alternative text. Inspect the actual public page, not only the media-library attachment screen.
Check that the image URL serves an image, dimensions are appropriate, and the mobile view remains readable. For technical screenshots, redact credentials and personal information. For a product, show the real item or accurately labeled example, not a generic decorative scene. Avoid squeezing the whole article into tiny text inside a graphic.
Choose one test page and one change. For example, replace an unreadable cropped connector diagram with a clear labeled view and explain the matching steps in HTML. Keep the existing URL when the page still answers the same need.
Measure Without Mixing Channels
Save the change date and recheck after enough new data accumulates. Keep web-text, multimodal, and Image-search exports separate. Do not add totals across reports as unique users or assume overlapping surfaces are mutually exclusive without documentation.
Use the generative AI reporting guide for that separate review. Search Console shows search performance, not completed sales; assess business outcomes with the site's permitted measurement system and its limitations.
If missing files or a broken image delivery path blocks the audit, request a focused WordPress image or rendering fix. Better reporting makes prioritization possible, but it does not guarantee indexing or clicks.
Sources checked September 27, 2026. Examples and diagrams are explanatory, not customer measurements.