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
  • Jordan
  • Tunisia
  • Nigeria
  • Bolivia
  • Germany
• Left/Right-hand traffic
• Google car
  • Ghana
  • Kenya
  • Mongolia
  • Bangladesh
  • Ukraine
  • Roof bars on the car
  • Nigeria
• Languages
  • Identify Asian languages
  • Identify Cyrillic languages
  • How to say "street"
  • Nordic languages
  • Baltic languages
• Road signs
  • USA
  • USA vs Canada
  • Slovenia
  • Denmark
• Road lines
  • Nordic road lines
• Internet domains
• Phone number
  • France
  • Italy
• License plates
  • Portugal license plates
  • USA front rear 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.

example

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.

Example on Google Street View

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

source

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.