Getting into GeoGuessr isn’t the easiest thing in the world. If you don’t have a strategy for eliminating possibilities and honing in on your position, it can be an incredibly daunting task. New players are typically relegated to looking for signs with major cities or country names on them. Not every spawn location is going to bless you with such a plethora of knowledge, however. Some may drop you into the middle of nowhere with few signs and buildings around.

There are ways to solve this without clicking a hundred times down the road to try and find the closest city. In this guide, we have eight GeoGuessr tips that will help you figure things out no matter where your location is.

The Compass Can’t Always Be Trusted

One of your most reliable tools is your compass. Even if you can’t move, it helps ground you and informs how you look for your location on a map. You need this for things like whether a building or body of water is to your north or south. The problem? It can’t always be trusted, particularly in photospheres which are 360-degree panoramic pictures. There’s something about these that makes Street View struggle to identify true north. If you can’t move, just be aware of this fact.

Use the Sun’s Location

Align your camera directly east or west. Which side of your screen is the sun on? If it’s in the north, you might be in the southern hemisphere. If it’s in the south, you’re likely in the northern hemisphere. This can get a bit tricky, however, depending on the weather and time of year, so we recommend also using shadows and satellite dishes to help confirm your location. The former will help confirm the sun’s direction; the latter will usually point towards the equator.

What Side of the Road are They Driving On?

Because most of the world drives on the right-hand side, it can be helpful to narrow down your selection of countries by determining which side of the road people drive on. There is a very limited number of countries on GeoGuessr that drive on the left-hand side of the road, which really helps.

Blue: Left-hand traffic
Red: Right-hand traffic

Nickshanks (original)Gts-tg (conversion to svg + small updates), CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Learn the Various Forms of Writing

By far, the easiest way of narrowing down which region of the world you’re in is through the language found on signs. If you see Hangul (Korea), Kanji (Japan), or Chinese characters, you should know which country you’re in — assuming you aren’t in an enclave outside the country, of course. Likewise, the more widespread forms of writing like Arabic (Egypt, Iran, Tunisia) or Abugida (Thailand, Cambodia, India, Malaysia) should let you know which region of the world you’re in.

Know Which Countries Aren’t on Street View

It’s also helpful to know where you don’t have to bother looking. Most of Africa has no Google Street View support, for example. Likewise, you won’t find Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, or Honduras. While it is still possible to get photospheres from these countries, if you’re playing a game where you can move, you’ll never see them appear.

In the above map:

Dark Blue: Nearly full coverage
Light Blue: Partial coverage
Orange: Full or partial coverage planned (official)
Peach: Full or partial coverage planned (unofficial)
Green: Views of select businesses and/or tourist attractions only
Light Green: Views of private businesses only
Gray: No current or planned coverage

Familiarize Yourself with Flags

Another thing you’ll frequently find, particularly in urban or suburban areas, are flags for whatever country you’re in. If you don’t like looking up information while playing, it helps to familiarize yourself with the various flags of the world. It can even help when it comes to license plates, which sometimes share the colors on the flag. Even if they’re almost always blurred — like Ukraine, for example — you can easily identify the blue and yellow color scheme.

Bodies of Water Are Incredibly Useful

Any bodies of water are legitimately your best friend, particularly if you can see the shape of the coastline. If you’re entirely landlocked, you could be anywhere in the world. At least if you can see water, you know to look out for things near lakes, seas, or oceans. Sometimes, the lake will be too small to see unless you’re super zoomed in, but if you’re near a big enough body of water, it can save you a bunch of time.

Search for Highways and Major Roads

If you play for long enough, signs for major highways can tell you exactly where you are in the world. For the rest of us though, they’re mostly a tool to confirm your suspicions. Think you know where you are? Find a nearby major roadway and confirm that the signs match up. If there are no signs, at least use the contour and direction of the streets using the compass.

Have tips for your fellow GeoGuessr players? Share them in the comments below!

Far Northern Tunic

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