Car Meta 🚗
When you pan downwards in Google Street View, you can often see an edge of the car that the camera is mounted on, known as the Google car. Since there were different types and colours of Google car used in mapping different places, you can often use the car colour or shape to narrow down where you are.
The white car is the most commonly seen car on Google Street View. There are a few different incarnations of the white car which can be tricky to tell apart.
The black car is the next most common, seen in parts of Europe and South America, and all Jordan coverage.
A version of the black car with a visible long antenna on the back is known as the Russia car, and is only seen in Russia, Donetsk, Israel, and Palestine.
Only Ukraine and Belgium have coverage using the red car. Car colour is a great way to work out if you're in Ukraine or Russia (unless you're unlucky enough to be in Donetsk). It's sometimes seen with an antenna on the back, sometimes without.
The Japan car is white, but the camera is mounted lower than normal, so you can see more of the car and a bigger blur at the bottom.
The Switzerland car also has a low mounted camera. The car blur is very large, and the photos are taken from an angle closer to the road. Unlike Japan's low cam, you normally don't see much of the car itself, just a big blur.
Several places use camera cars with roof racks, normally called bars ion Geoguessr parlance. These are two examples from Mongolia's coverage. Much of Mongolia's coverage uses a car which has some kind of camping equipment on top, since the drivers had to sleep outside when covering remote parts of the country.
The Nigerian car also has distinctive bars. The follow car is a police escort that accompanied the drivers in Nigeria.
Kenya's coverage uses a car with a snorkel. Only Kenya and Mongolia have snorkel cars.
The Sri Lanka car is white with a red blur on the right side. It's only used in Sri Lanka.
The Ghana car has bars, but famously has one bar taped with black duct tape. If you see this tape, you can only be in Ghana.
These distinctive side mirrors are only visible on the Guatemala car.
Coverage on Christmas Island comes from the back of this silver pickup/ute/truck/bakkie.
Trekkers and contributor coverage
Not all street view imagery is captured by an official Google car. Some of it is captured by contributors or volunteers with 360 cameras, sometimes mounted on their own cars, boats, motorbikes, or drones. This coverage is known as trekker coverage. Some places have no coverage apart from 360° smartphone photos, or the insides of museums. Consult the home page to see what coverage is available where.