geoguessr-tips
Tips and resources for GeoGuessr.
More tricks and techniques can be found on this famous blog
Table of contents
- Coverage of Google Street View
- Left/Right-hand traffic
- Google car
- Languages
- Road signs
- Road lines
- Internet domains
- Phone number
- License plates
Coverage of Google Street View
- Map maker tool of GeoGuessr
- Wikipedia page
Some countries have very limited street viewed areas. It can reduce the places to search for a city name or road number and also improve random guesses.
Jordan
Tunisia
Tunisia is only street viewed on the east coast
Nigeria
Bolivia
Germany
Germany is only street viewed around big cities.
Left/Right-hand traffic
Full list can be found on wikipedia.
Google car
Some countries have a special Google car that is easy to recognize.
Ghana
In Ghana the car has roof bars with black tape.
Kenya
In Kenya the car has a snorkel.
Mongolia
Bangladesh
Some places in Bangladesh, but not all, have a very distinctive car with with roof bars, red mirrors, yellow and green door.
Ukraine
In Ukraine the google car is red.
Roof bars on the car
In several countries the Google car simply has metal bars on the roof. There are not that many countries with it so this feature and some additional context can really help identify the country. For instance spanish language + roof bars often means Guatemala.
Guatemala
Kyrgystan
Dominican Republic
Curaçao
Nigeria
In some places of the country (not all !) the google car is followed by a police car. One of the police cars is really easy to identify because it has red and blue lights on the roof.
Street view year
Countries with specific year on all the pictures:
- Croatia: 2013
Languages
Identify Asian languages
Identify Cyrillic languages
How to say "street"
In Europe
| Country | "street" |
|---|---|
| Albanian | rrugë |
| Bulgarian | улица |
| Macedonian | улица |
| Serbian | улица |
| Russian | улица |
| Ukrainian | вулиця |
| Greek | δρόμος |
| Catalan | carrer |
| Croatian | ulica |
| Polish | ulica |
| Slovenian | ulica |
| Czech | ulice |
| Hungarian | utca |
| Lithuanian | gatvė |
| Danish | gade |
| Norwegian | gate |
| Swedish | gata |
| Finnish | katu |
| Dutch | straat |
| Italian | strada |
| Romanian | stradă |
| French | rue |
| Galician | rúa |
| Portuguese | rua |
| Estonian | tänav |
| German | Straße |
| Icelandic | Götu |
| Irish | ainm |
| Latvian | iela |
| Luxembourgish | Strooss |
| Maltese | triq |
| Scots Gaelic | sràid |
| Slovak | pouličné |
| Spanish | calle |
| Welsh | stryd |
| Turkish | sokak |
Identifying street signs can be trained by playing in no move on this map.
Nordic languages
- The Finnish alphabet has 2 extra letters: ä and ö.
- The Danish and Norwegian alphabet has 3 extra letters: æ, ø and å.
- The Swedish alphabet has 3 extra letters: å, ä and ö.
Baltic languages
- Latvia: aābcčdeēfgģhiījkķlļmnņoprsštuūvzž (has a with bar)
- Lithuania: aąbcčdeęėfghiįyjklmnoprsštuųūvzž (has no a with bar)
- Estonia: ABDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSŠZŽTUVÕÄÖÜ (has a with to dots above)
Road signs
USA
USA highway signs design differs from one state to another.
source: reddit and 99percentinvisible
USA vs Canada
Signs indicating speed limits are different between the USA and Canada. In the USA the sign says "SPEED LIMIT" while in canada it says "MAXIMUM"
Slovenia
The kilometer signs are very frequent in Slovenia and they also contain the road number in yellow.
Denmark
These signs with red writting on white background and red border are only in Denmark.
Road lines
Nordic road lines
Road lines can be a good way to distinguish between nordic countries. This is not true everywhere but can be still be used.
- In sweden, lanes on the side are made of small dashes:
- Finland has solid side lines most of the time
- Some places in Denmark have dotted lines with very small dots
- Norway has a mix of solid lines and long dashes
Internet domains
Internet website are often found on shops, ads, trucks... If it does not end with a classic .com it can be really helpful to identify the country.
A complete list of Internet country code top-level domains can be found of wikipedia.
Here is a list of some tricky ones that can be seen in Geoguessr:
.ae= United Arab Emirates.ch= Switzerland (from Confoederatio Helvetica).cw= Curaçao.ee= Estonia.hr= Croatia.lk= Sri Lanka.rs= Serbia.sz= Eswatini.ua= Ukraine.za= South Africa (from Zuid-Afrika in Dutch)
Phone number
In many countries the first digits of the phone number are based on the geographic area.
France
source: wikipedia
06 and 07 are mobile phones
Italy
In Italy, first digits are sorted from north to south.
source: Reddit
License plates
Portugal license plates
European license plates have blue on the left but Portugal is the only country with yellow on the right.
This is still visible through the blur
However, since 2020 the new plates will look more like the European standard without yellow.
See Vehicle registration plates of Portugal article on wikipedia for more details.
USA license plate mounting scheme
In the USA front license plates are not mandatory in all states. The map and table below illustrate each states license plate mounting scheme.
source: wikipedia
| Color | Mounting scheme | States |
|---|---|---|
 |
Only rear plates required | Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia |
 |
Front and rear plates required | Alaska, American Samoa, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington |
 |
Front and rear generally required with Exceptions | Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming, Wisconsin |
See Vehicle registration plates of the United States article on wikipedia for more details.