Playing geography games like LostStreet or GeoGuessr can sometimes feel like magic when a pro drops a pin exactly on the right road in rural Kenya within 5 seconds. But it's not magic—it's meta-knowledge.
Google Street View captures specific visual data that can give away a country almost instantly if you know what to look for. Here is a beginner's guide to the meta.
1. Which Side of the Road?
The most fundamental clue is driving side. Most of the world drives on the right, but several key regions drive on the left:
- Europe: UK, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus.
- Oceania: Australia, New Zealand.
- Asia: Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand.
- Africa: South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana (Southern and East Africa generally).
2. Language and Alphabets
Billboards and street signs are dead giveaways.
- Cyrillic: Found in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan. (Look for distinctive letters to tell them apart, like "i" in Ukrainian).
- Spanish vs Portuguese: If you see "ã" or "õ", you are looking at Portuguese (likely Brazil). If you see "ñ", it's Spanish (Latin America or Spain).
- Asian Scripts: Korean is blocky with circles (Hangul). Japanese mixes complex characters (Kanji) with simpler, curved ones (Hiragana/Katakana). Chinese relies entirely on complex characters.
3. The "Google Car" Meta
Sometimes, the camera equipment itself gives away the location:
- The Ghana Tape: The Google car in Ghana famously has black tape on its roof rack.
- The Kenya Snorkel: You will often see a black snorkel sticking out of the front right of the car in Kenya.
- Guatemala Mirrors: The car in Guatemala often shows visible side mirrors.
4. Bollards and Infrastructure
Bollards (the small posts on the side of the road) are country-specific. For example:
- France: White with a red band.
- Australia: White with a red reflector on the back, white on the front.