Your Customers Are Searching With Photos Now: Is Your Business Website Ready?
Most businesses still think about search as somebody opening Google and typing a few words into a box.
That is no longer the whole picture.
A customer can point their phone at a product, upload a photo, circle something on their Android screen or search directly from an image in Chrome. Google can then use the image alongside other context to work out what the person is looking for.
The interesting part for website owners is that Google has now made this easier to measure.
On 24 September 2026, Google announced multimodal search performance reporting in Search Console. The reporting includes searches from Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, images uploaded to Google Search and Chrome's "Search this image" feature.
If your website receives traffic from these searches, the data can start appearing in your Search Console performance reports.
For a small business, this is a useful reminder that the images on your website are not just decoration anymore. They can be part of how somebody discovers you.
What is visual or multimodal search?
Traditional search usually starts with text.
Visual search starts with an image, or combines an image with words and other context.
Imagine somebody sees a dining chair they like. Instead of trying to describe it as "light oak curved back dining chair", they can photograph it and search from the photo.
The same idea can apply to clothing, plants, furniture, food, equipment, home finishes, car parts and plenty of other things people encounter in the real world.
Multimodal search goes a little further because the image can be combined with another question or signal. Someone might photograph an item and ask where to buy something similar nearby, what it is called or how it is used.
For businesses, the important question becomes: does your website give search engines enough useful visual and page context to understand what you offer?
Is this only important for e-commerce websites?
No, although online shops have an obvious use case.
Product businesses should pay close attention because their images can directly represent things customers are searching for. Clear product photography, useful product information and properly built product pages all work together.
But visual search can matter outside e-commerce too.
A landscaper can show completed gardens and specific materials. A builder or renovation company can show finishes and completed work. A restaurant can publish useful photos of dishes and the venue. A furniture business can show individual pieces in context. A mechanic or parts supplier can publish accurate product imagery. A professional service business can use diagrams, examples and original project imagery where those visuals genuinely help explain the service.
Not every business will suddenly receive large amounts of Google Lens traffic. The point is that visual discovery is now measurable enough that Google has added dedicated reporting for it.
Google Search Console can now show multimodal search performance
Google's new reporting is probably the most useful part of this update for business owners and SEO teams.
Google says the multimodal data is available in the Search results performance report as well as its Generative AI features report. There is a new multimodal search-type filter, and the data can be exported for further analysis.
The rollout is global, but you will only see useful metrics if your website is actually receiving traffic from those searches.
That distinction matters. You do not need to panic if you open Search Console and see very little multimodal data. It is a measurement tool, not evidence that every industry suddenly gets most of its traffic from images.
What it does give us is another way to understand how search behaviour is changing.
How do I optimise website images for Google Lens and visual search?
There is no magic "Google Lens SEO" switch.
The same principle we use for good SEO applies here: make the page genuinely useful and make it technically easy for search engines to understand.
Use clear, relevant images
If you are selling a product, show the actual product clearly.
Use good lighting, useful angles and enough resolution for the subject to be understandable. Avoid making every product image a tiny object surrounded by graphics, promotional text and decorative elements.
For service businesses, original project photography can be particularly valuable because it shows work that is actually yours rather than the same stock image used by dozens of websites.
Put the image on a relevant page
An image does not exist in isolation.
A photo of a kitchen renovation makes more sense to a search engine when it sits on a page explaining the project, location, materials, services and outcome than when it sits inside an unexplained gallery containing 100 images.
The surrounding heading, copy and page structure give the image context.
Write useful alt text
Alt text primarily exists for accessibility. It should describe the meaningful content or purpose of an image for someone who cannot see it.
Good alt text also gives search engines useful textual context.
Do not turn it into a keyword list.
Brisbane SEO web design Google Lens best website cheap SEO is not useful alt text.
Something such as Custom oak entertainment unit installed in a Brisbane living room is much more useful when that is genuinely what the image shows.
Use sensible filenames
A descriptive filename is a small, simple improvement.
custom-oak-entertainment-unit.webp tells you more than IMG_8274.webp.
I would not rename thousands of images solely because of this, but for new website content there is little reason not to use understandable filenames.
Keep images fast
High-quality photography does not need to mean a 9 MB image on every page.
Resize images to the dimensions you actually need, compress them appropriately and use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF where they fit your browser and website requirements.
Performance still matters. An image that helps search but makes the page painfully slow is not a good trade.
Does structured data matter?
For relevant pages, yes.
Structured data gives search engines explicit information about what a page represents. For an e-commerce website, Product structured data can describe details such as the product, price, availability and reviews where the markup meets Google's requirements.
For a local business, appropriate LocalBusiness information can help describe the organisation and its location.
Structured data does not replace good page content or good images. It is another layer of machine-readable context.
The rule I follow is simple: mark up what is actually on the page. Do not create structured data purely to tell Google something the customer cannot see.
Should I use AI-generated product images?
This is an area where I would be careful.
AI-generated imagery is useful for concepts, backgrounds, illustrations and marketing creative. We use it ourselves where it makes sense.
But if you are selling a physical product, the customer should be able to see what they are actually buying.
For a builder, designer, restaurant or trades business, the same principle applies to portfolio work. If an image represents a completed project, use the real project photo rather than an AI approximation of what you could have built.
Authentic visual content has value beyond SEO. It builds trust.
What should a Brisbane small business do now?
I would not rebuild a website purely because Google added a Search Console filter.
I would use this as an opportunity to check whether your visual content is doing its job.
Start with your important pages:
- Check whether the images actually represent the product or service on the page.
- Replace weak or irrelevant stock imagery where you have better original material available.
- Add useful alt text to meaningful images.
- Give new files sensible descriptive names.
- Resize and compress oversized images.
- Make sure important images can be crawled and are not hidden behind broken scripts or access restrictions.
- For products and relevant business pages, review the structured data around the content.
- Open Search Console and start watching the new multimodal reporting as data becomes available.
For a product catalogue, I would also review image consistency. Customers should be able to see the item clearly, and search engines should not have to work through a completely different visual style on every product page.
Can Google Lens find my business?
There is not a simple yes-or-no switch that makes a business "available in Lens".
Google's visual systems can use web content as part of search experiences, and the new Search Console reporting gives website owners more visibility into when their content is surfaced from multimodal searches.
Your best approach is not to chase a secret Lens ranking factor. Build strong pages, publish useful original visual content, make the images technically accessible and give Google clear context about the page and business.
That is much closer to sustainable SEO than adding another plugin labelled "AI visual search optimisation" and hoping for the best.
Does visual search change normal SEO?
It adds to it rather than replacing it.
Customers still search with words. Local search still matters. Good service pages still matter. Technical SEO, internal linking, useful content, page speed and clear business information still matter.
What is changing is the number of ways somebody can begin a search.
Text is one input. A photo can now be another.
For businesses with visually identifiable products, projects or services, that creates an opportunity to treat website imagery as searchable content rather than filler between paragraphs.
The takeaway
Google adding multimodal search reporting to Search Console is a small feature with a bigger message behind it: search is becoming less dependent on typing.
That does not mean every business needs a new visual-search strategy tomorrow.
It does mean the quality, context and technical handling of your website images deserves more attention than uploading IMG_1234.jpg and moving on.
At Techmendz, we look at SEO as part of the whole website rather than a list of keywords added after development. That includes performance, structured data, content, accessibility and increasingly the visual information customers and search engines use to understand a business.
If your website has years of oversized images, generic stock photos or product pages with very little context, visual search is another good reason to clean that up.
Sources
- Google Search Central — Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console, 24 September 2026
- Google Search Central — Search documentation and structured-data guidance