Measurement

Search Console split Web in two on 24 September. The API didn't get the memo.

By Arnav Mukherjee, founder of TofuBofu · September 26, 2026

I keep a habit that's paid for itself several times: whenever Google changes a report, I go and check whether the API changed with it. Most of the time it has. On Thursday it didn't, and the gap is the kind that quietly turns a number you trust into a number you've misread.

On 24 September 2026 two Google product managers announced Search Console reporting for web multimodal search. The interesting half isn't the Lens data. It's where they put it: "in the report for performance on Search results as well as in the report for Generative AI features". The second one is the free instrument I've spent months telling B2B founders to go and open, because it's the only place Google shows you anything about its AI surfaces.

So a report people are using to measure their AI visibility gained a new dimension mid-month, globally, and the API that every tool reads it through can't see that dimension at all. I checked, because the trade coverage all led on the Lens angle and nobody mentioned the API.

What Google shipped, and the exact date

The post is dated Thursday, September 24, 2026, and signed by Harsh Kharbanda, Product Manager Lead for Google Lens, and Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead for Search Console. The scope of what counts is listed plainly: the data covers "searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click “Search this image” feature."

You reach it through a new multimodal search type filter, and on rollout Google wrote "the integration of multimodal search data is rolling out globally starting today", which dates the boundary precisely. The help page then gives the two definitions that matter, and they're worth reading as a pair. Web: text-based "includes traditional search traffic originating from text queries entered into the standard Google search bar." Web: multimodal "includes web search results where an image was used as part of the search."

Notice what that tells you about the past. Both halves are Web. The traffic didn't arrive on Thursday, the ability to separate it did. Whatever Lens and Circle to Search were sending you in July was already inside your Web numbers, unlabelled, and you had no way to know how much.

The API still has six search types, and multimodal isn't one

I read the Search Analytics query reference on 26 September 2026. The type parameter takes six values: discover, googleNews, news, image, video and web. The string "multimodal" appears zero times on the entire page. It isn't a searchAppearance value either, and it's absent from the dimensions help page.

Now put that beside Google's own definition of the value everyone sends: web is "[Default] Filter results to the combined (“All”) tab in Google Search. Does not include Discover or Google News results." The combined All tab is the thing the interface now divides in two. So an API request for type: web asks for text-based and multimodal together, and no parameter exists to pull them apart.

That's the whole finding, and it's small and consequential. The split lives behind a screen. Every dashboard, every agency report, every AI visibility platform and every spreadsheet that pulls Search Console data through the API is reporting a blend and calling it Web, and will keep doing so until Google adds the enum.

Our own integration has the same blind spot

I'd rather point at our own code than imply this is somebody else's problem. TofuBofu ingests Google Search Console for customers who connect it, and our integration makes three Search Analytics calls. All three send "type": "web". So the Search Console numbers on a customer's traffic screen are the combined All tab, exactly as Google hands them over, with camera searches and typed searches added together.

We can't fix that from our side. There's no parameter to send. Any vendor who tells you their dashboard breaks out multimodal today is either reading a screen by hand or making it up, and that's a useful test to run on anyone selling you Search Console reporting this month.

What we can do is say so, which is the same discipline we apply to our own scan data. When our measurement changes, the chart says the date it changed and tells you to read counts rather than direction across the boundary. Google's report deserves the same treatment from you, and it won't do it for you.

What to do about it in ten minutes

Open Search Console, go to the Performance report, and use the search type filter to pick Web: multimodal. Write down the clicks and impressions. For most B2B firms the answer will be close to nothing, and that's a genuinely useful thing to know once, because it means your Web trend line is essentially all typed search and you can stop thinking about this. If it isn't close to nothing, you've just found a traffic source you didn't know you had, and you should look at which pages carry it.

Then do the same inside the Generative AI features report, because that's where the measurement question bites. If you've been tracking a monthly number out of that report, annotate 24 September 2026 on your own chart. A comparison that straddles a reporting change measures the reporting as well as the performance, and Google gives you no warning banner for it.

And keep the general lesson, which is the reason I wrote this rather than skipping it as a minor release note. The free first-party instruments are worth using and I'll keep saying so. They also change under you, on Google's schedule, with the interface and the API moving at different speeds. Anything you measure through somebody else's dashboard is a number whose definition you don't control, which is exactly why the questions that decide your deals are worth asking the engines directly.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Google Search Central: Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console, by Harsh Kharbanda and Moshe Samet, dated Thursday, September 24, 2026, read at source 26 September 2026: the announcement carrying the two reports, the four multimodal surfaces and the global rollout sentence
• Search Console Help: Performance reports, read at source 26 September 2026: the search type filter, and Google's own definitions of Web: text-based and Web: multimodal
• Search Console API: Search Analytics query reference, read at source 26 September 2026: the six values of the type parameter, the definition of web as the combined All tab, and zero occurrences of multimodal
• Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report: the AI-surface report the multimodal data also landed in
• Our own code: app/services/google_search.py sends "type": "web" on all three Search Analytics calls, read at HEAD on 26 September 2026