Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Day 3 · Friday 2 October 2026 · 13:55
Named on the title slide. Query groups, AI-powered report configuration, AI reporting, social platform properties and multimodal search reporting.
To show how diverse queries for one intent are, Google's Search Console talk showed a slide titled 'How to spell Britney Spears?' with a long list of spelling variants, citing archive.google/jobs/britney.html.
“How to spell Britney Spears?”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's Search Console talk presented multimodal search reporting as its fifth and newest launch, under a 'Hot from the oven' badge.
“5. Multimodal search reporting”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's Search Console talk at the Deep Dive covered five Search Console launches of the past year: query groups, AI-powered configuration of the Performance report, generative AI control and reporting, platform properties for social accounts, and multimodal search reporting.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence slide photo, transcript
Search Console's query groups put together queries that express a very similar user intent but are written differently, for example with more or fewer words or with spelling errors, so site owners can see the intent behind their traffic instead of every query string.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Query groups
Google's Search Console talk said Google's logs show hundreds of different ways in which people write the query for Britney Spears.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google said query groups are not built by matching query text alone: deciding which queries belong in which group goes beyond simple text filtering.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google named granularity as a design challenge of query groups: putting many queries into one large group versus splitting them into smaller, more specific groups.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Query groups can change when the meaning of a query changes over time: a 2023 search for 'Gemini' may have meant the astrological sign, but after Google launched Gemini it means something else, so Search Console may now group it differently.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google acknowledged that query grouping is not perfect: some queries are not understood, and some are not grouped in a logical way.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Query groups appear in the Search Console Insights report as a table of the top groups, showing the total clicks of all the queries inside each group, with an option to view a larger table.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Each query group in Search Console is titled with the most prominent query in the group.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term Query groups
Drilling into a query group opens the Search Console Performance report with a regex filter that contains all the queries of the group, so each individual query can be analysed.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google's Search Console team said query groups have been found very useful and that people are using them.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google's Search Console team asks for feedback on every new feature, through the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons or any other feedback feature in Search Console, and said it takes that feedback very seriously.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Users often told Google that the Search Console Performance report is complex to configure, because it can be filtered and customised in many ways, such as by query, page, country and search type.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Search Console's AI-powered configuration is a chat box in which users describe the analysis they want in natural language, and the request is transformed into the Performance report's configuration.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term AI-powered configuration
Google said requests to Search Console's AI-powered configuration can be written in any language, not only English.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Search Console's AI-powered configuration lists the changes it will make to the Performance report and applies them only after the user approves.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byglossary term AI-powered configuration
Search Console's AI-powered configuration is conversational rather than one-shot: a follow-up request adds changes on top of the configuration already applied.
“So it's not one-shot, but you can also interact with it.”
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
An example request for Search Console's AI-powered configuration was to show queries on phone searches containing the word sports in the last six months.
“Show me queries on phone searches that contain the word sports in the last 6 months.”
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
In a test by Google's Search Console team, the vague request 'wine-related queries that lead to my site' made Search Console's AI-powered configuration build a regex filter of wine names, such as Merlot, joined by pipe characters, without the user typing the regex.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Search Console has a tool with which every property owner can tell Google whether the site's content may be used in AI search results, because Google wants content owners to control their content.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Search Console added reporting of the impressions a site's content gets in the AI surfaces of Google Search, found in the left navigation nested under Search results.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
The regular Search Console Performance report still shows all traffic including AI features, while the generative AI view shows only impressions from AI surfaces.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07glossary term Generative AI performance report
Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions broken down by pages, countries and devices.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Search Console launched platform properties, which bring social platforms into Search Console, about three or four months before the October 2026 event.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Platform properties let a user verify ownership of an Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube account in Search Console and see the traffic Google sends to that account.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09glossary term Platform properties
Google said it is working on adding more platforms to Search Console's platform properties beyond Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google acknowledged that verifying a website in Search Console, by placing a Google token on the homepage or in the DNS setup, is a relatively high bar for some people.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
A platform property is verified entirely from within Search Console: a pop-up from the platform, for example Instagram, asks the user to grant Google permission to identify the account and its handle, and completing it proves ownership without a token.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09glossary term Platform properties
Platform properties have a newly designed landing page, similar to the Insights report, that shows overall clicks and the search types that lead to the account.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
The platform property landing page lists the account's top-performing content items, for example a channel's top YouTube videos, and the items trending up and trending down.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Platform properties also show the query groups that lead to the account's content and the countries that send it traffic.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Because platform properties bring many new users to Search Console, Google published documentation and strategy guidance on them, covering how to identify the Search audience, use the 24-hour real-time view, export data and compare platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
In a YouTube platform property, long-form and short-form videos can be compared in the Performance report's comparison mode by URL pattern, /watch versus /shorts/; Instagram posts (/p/) and reels can be compared the same way.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09
In the example YouTube report shown in Google's Search Console talk, long-form videos still got more traffic and more impressions from Google than Shorts; this was one example channel, not a general finding.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Multimodal search reporting in Search Console launched about a week and a half before the 2 October 2026 talk.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google said searching with images is convenient for users and drives traffic to websites.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Until the multimodal launch, the Search Console Performance report essentially showed only text-based searches.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Multimodal searches reported in Search Console include searches with Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, images uploaded to Google Search and Chrome's right-click search on an image.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07glossary term Multimodal search type
To see multimodal traffic in the Search Console Performance report, select the multimodal search type instead of the default text-based one.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07glossary term Multimodal search type
In a live demo, Google Lens on an Android phone identified a photographed object and listed websites selling it, with deep links that allow buying it online.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
In a demo, asking Chrome about an image on a web page opened a side panel of visual matches, one of which was on Google's developers site and led on to more information about Search Console; Google described this as the full flow of the multimodal traffic now reported.
Speaker Ariel KroszynskiEvidence transcript
Google's query groups announcement (27 October 2025) says the groups are computed with AI, may change over time and do not affect ranking, and that query groups are available only to properties with a large volume of queries.
Publisher Search Central blog (27 October 2025)
Used byglossary term Query groups
Google's Search Console help says the experimental AI-powered configuration is visible only to a small percentage of users, allows each user 20 requests per day, keeps existing report filters when it adds new ones, and applies its suggested settings only after the user confirms them.
Publisher Google Search Console Help
Used byglossary term AI-powered configuration
Google's announcement of 24 September 2026 says multimodal search data appears both in the Performance report for Search results and in the generative AI performance report, can be exported, and began rolling out globally that day.
Publisher Search Central blog (24 September 2026)
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07glossary terms Generative AI performance report, Multimodal search type
Google's help page on platform properties says ownership is checked periodically and, if the external login expires, access pauses until the account is re-verified; each account or channel needs its own property, and data takes a few days to appear.
Publisher Google Search Console Help
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09
Google's help page says platform properties show only how content performs on Google Search, Discover and Google News, not how often it is seen on the social or video platform itself.
Publisher Google Search Console Help
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09glossary term Platform properties
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
Publisher Google Search Central
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-09glossary term Search profile
The Google archive page cited on the Britney Spears slide lists 593 spellings (the correct one plus 592 misspellings), each typed by at least two different users within a three-month period and corrected by Google's spelling system; it is an old jobs page (footer 2011), so the figures are historical.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
The speaker placed the query groups launch, hedging, in December, but Google's announcement is dated 27 October 2025 with a gradual rollout over the following weeks, so many sites may first have seen the card around December 2025.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
For content planning, read query groups (and their trending up and trending down views) as intent themes: write for the intent the group stands for, not for each spelling or phrasing variant in it.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Review the filters and regexes that Search Console's AI-powered configuration proposes before trusting the numbers: Google's launch post calls the feature experimental, warns that AI can misinterpret requests, and limits it to the Search results Performance report (not Discover or News) and to configuration, not sorting or exporting.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Search Console's generative AI performance reports count impressions only, with no clicks and no query dimension (Google documents the Search report for AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus a separate Discover report), so measure visits that follow AI answers with your own analytics.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07
Media teams that publish on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or X should add each account as a Search Console platform property and compare formats by URL pattern; Google's July 2026 post says an account already used for a Search profile should already give access to its data.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Google's Performance report help says the queries dimension is not available for the multimodal search type, because these searches mostly use images, so judge image-led traffic by page, country and device, and make product and article images distinctive enough for Lens to match.
Author Ibrahim Anjro
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
Search Console launched platform properties, which bring social platforms into Search Console, about three or four months before the October 2026 event.
A community speaker said publishers can also verify their social accounts in Search Console, which makes it easier to track the performance of content repurposed for social platforms.
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
Publishers and creators can claim a dedicated Search profile with a name, profile photo, cover image, bio, connected social and website accounts, pinned posts and links, and users can follow it.
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
A community speaker said publishers can also verify their social accounts in Search Console, which makes it easier to track the performance of content repurposed for social platforms.
Google's launch post for Search Console's branded queries filter (20 November 2025) says the branded versus non-branded split is made by an internal AI-assisted system, not by a regular expression, and that some queries may occasionally be misidentified.
Google said query groups are not built by matching query text alone: deciding which queries belong in which group goes beyond simple text filtering.
Nik Vujic said GA4 setups that separate out traffic from LLMs do not capture visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The regular Search Console Performance report still shows all traffic including AI features, while the generative AI view shows only impressions from AI surfaces.
Nik Vujic said he hopes Search Console's generative AI report will get query data.
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
Google's AI features guide says traffic from sites appearing in AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the overall search traffic in Search Console and reported in the Performance report within the Web search type.
The regular Search Console Performance report still shows all traffic including AI features, while the generative AI view shows only impressions from AI surfaces.
Before feeding a branded versus non-branded split to an LLM, spot-check a sample of queries in each group, since Google's AI-assisted classification can misidentify queries; on URL-path or subdomain properties, where the filter is unavailable, a regex query filter is the fallback.
Review the filters and regexes that Search Console's AI-powered configuration proposes before trusting the numbers: Google's launch post calls the feature experimental, warns that AI can misinterpret requests, and limits it to the Search results Performance report (not Discover or News) and to configuration, not sorting or exporting.
Review the filters and regexes that Search Console's AI-powered configuration proposes before trusting the numbers: Google's launch post calls the feature experimental, warns that AI can misinterpret requests, and limits it to the Search results Performance report (not Discover or News) and to configuration, not sorting or exporting.
The first rule for using LLMs on search data, according to a community speaker, is never to let the model check its own output.
Search Console has a tool with which every property owner can tell Google whether the site's content may be used in AI search results, because Google wants content owners to control their content.
Search Console has a property setting called Search generative AI that gives direct control over AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting web rankings. Its states are inherit from parent, include and exclude.
Search Console added reporting of the impressions a site's content gets in the AI surfaces of Google Search, found in the left navigation nested under Search results.
Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions broken down by pages, countries and devices.
Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
Google said Search Console's generative AI reporting launched alongside the generative AI control, starting with impressions only, and may expand later.