aex.red

Geolocation Techniques

Geolocation Techniques

Determining the physical location of a person, object, or event from images, videos, or digital metadata.

EXIF GPS Data

The fastest method — many phone cameras embed GPS coordinates.

# Extract GPS from image
exiftool -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude -GPSAltitude photo.jpg
 
# Convert to decimal degrees if DMS format
# 51 deg 30' 26.00" N = 51.507222
# Negative for South/West
 
# Batch process directory
exiftool -r -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude ./photos/

Online: Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer: https://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

Visual Geolocation (GeoGuessr Techniques)

When no metadata is available, geolocate from visual clues in the image/video.

Checklist:

  • Language on signs — narrows to country/region
  • Script/alphabet — Cyrillic, Arabic, CJK, Latin variants
  • Architecture style — typical of certain regions
  • Vegetation / terrain — climate zones
  • Vehicle license plates — country and often region
  • Road markings — lane colours, direction arrows vary by country
  • Utility poles — wood vs concrete, wiring style
  • Sun position — time of day + direction of shadows → compass bearing
  • Stars — if visible at night, hemisphere and season
  • Mountain/skyline profiles — matchable on Google Earth

Tools

# Reverse image search — find where image appears online (may reveal location context)
# Google Images: https://images.google.com
# Yandex Images: https://yandex.com/images (excellent for Russian/CIS geolocating)
# TinEye: https://tineye.com

Specialist tools:

IP Geolocation

Approximate physical location from IP address (accuracy varies — often city/region level).

# curl-based lookup
curl https://ipinfo.io/1.2.3.4
curl https://ipapi.co/1.2.3.4/json/

Tools:

Note: VPNs, proxies, and Tor exit nodes defeat IP geolocation. CDN/hosting IPs geolocate to data centres, not users.

See Also

Graph View

Backlinks