Recognizing Western European locations in Geoguessr can be quickly nailed down by observing specific cues such as unique bollard designs—red reflectors in Italy, unusual shapes in Austria, and distinct colors in Spain. License plates are tell-tale, with Belgium's red text blur, Switzerland's absence of EU stripes, Italy's blue side stripes, and distinct Andorran and Maltese designs. Pay attention to road lines, signs, and languages—yellow lines in Ireland, blue directional arrows in Italy, and dual-language signage in Ireland, Switzerland, and Belgium.

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Western Europe Metas

Italian bollards have a unique design with a vertical red rectangle inside a black diagonal strip on the front, where the black part extends to the top of the bollard, a rarity in bollard designs. The rear of these bollards features a white rectangle instead of the front's red one.

Bollards 🇮🇹 Italy

In Spain, borders on red road signs extend to the edge of the sign - there is no outline. This is a great way to identify Spain as there are many of these signs.

Street Sign 🇪🇸 Spain

Tall mountains are a common fixture in Switzerland. The houses in Switzerland are often wooden and multi-storey with terracotta-coloured slanting roofs.

Flora 🇨🇭 Switzerland

You can often find miniature churches along Greek roads.

Other 🇬🇷 Greece

The French island of Corsica often has shorter, white dashes on the sides of the road. It also has mountains in the centre of the island and a Mediterranean feel elsewhere.

Street Markings 🇫🇷 France

Monaco, the second smallest country in the world, also has Geoguessr coverage. The city has tons of yachts, expensive buildings, as well as the distinctive harbor in the center and mountains in the background.

Coverage 🇲🇨 Monaco

Spanish pedestrian crossing signs have 8 stripes - the highest number in Europe!

Street Sign 🇪🇸 Spain

Although bollards are relatively rare in the UK compared to some other European countries, they are rather unique looking and consist of black and white sections with a large red rectangle on top.

Bollards 🇬🇧 United Kingdom (UK)

Greek directional signs are blue and have Greek written in yellow and English in white. They are a very distinct Greece feature.

Street Sign 🇬🇷 Greece

In Malta, the cars drive on the left. The only other countries within Europe that drive on the left are the U.K. and Ireland. Malta looks much more Mediterranean than these places.

Driving direction 🇲🇹 Malta

Irish road signs will typically contain both English and Gaelic.

Street Sign 🇮🇪 Ireland

In Italian towns and cities, the street signs often have the word ‘VIA’ on them. This translates to English as ‘street’.

Street Name 🇮🇹 Italy

In Dutch, the ‘weg’ suffix means ‘road’ and the ‘straat’ suffix means ‘street’.

Street Name 🇳🇱 Netherlands

Switzerland is one of the rare European countries that lack the blue vertical stripe of Europe on their license plates. Front Swiss license plates are typically less elongated than the rest of Europe.

License Plate 🇨🇭 Switzerland

Bollards in Luxembourg are wedge-shaped with a grey rectangular reflector in the front and two circular reflectors in the rear.

Bollards 🇱🇺 Luxembourg

Greece has wedge-shaped bollards with a rectangular reflector, which is red in the front and white on the back.

Bollards 🇬🇷 Greece

German is spoken across Germany and Austria. It’s also spoken in most of Switzerland, north Italy and a tiny speck of eastern Belgium. The umlaut appears regularly in German: ä, ü and ö. If you see the letter ß you are in Germany or Austria, not Switzerland which uses ‘ss’ in place of ß.

Language 🇩🇪 Germany

Across most of Luxembourg, the country has undulating terrain. It's rarely steep and often consists of gentle slopes. It is rare to see flat land in Luxembourg (something that the Netherlands has a lot of). Much of the Luxembourg landscape consists of green grass fields.

Flora 🇱🇺 Luxembourg

A number of cars in Switzerland have these ‘CH’ stickers on their rear. CH stands for ‘Confoederatio Helvetica’ which are the Latin words for ‘Swiss Federation’.

License Plate 🇨🇭 Switzerland

The word ‘rue’ translates from French to English as ‘street’. On metropolitan street corners, it’s standard to see the word ‘rue’ on signs.

Street Name 🇫🇷 France

Like the UK, the Isle of Man has yellow rear plates. Unlike the UK, the plates have a red stripe on the left.

License Plate 🇮🇲 Isle of Man

Germany has these bollards featuring a white, vertical strip on the front and two white dots on the rear.

Bollards 🇩🇪 Germany

Directional arrows that point to Italian towns are blue with a white end. These arrows look relatively similar to the Czechia town directional arrows however they are distinct.

Street Sign 🇮🇹 Italy

In 2023, Google released new, generation 4 Street View coverage across virtually the entire Germany. This means you should see the blue tinge of the Street View car if you pan down.

Google Car 🇩🇪 Germany

In Belgium cities, it is common to have the city’s name on street signs. In the above example, the city name ‘Liege’ is written on the street sign.

Street Name 🇧🇪 Belgium

Luxembourg uses yellow license plates (front and back) with the EU strip on the left side.

License Plate 🇱🇺 Luxembourg

The Greek language has a unique alphabet. It can look a bit like Cyrillic, but generally has softer shaped letters.

Language 🇬🇷 Greece

Portugal can be recognised because drivers normally have a yellow vertical stripe on the right hand side of the license plates to go with the vertical blue stripe on the left hand side of the plate.

License Plate 🇵🇹 Portugal

Italy's license plates are recognizable by the light blue vertical stripes on both the left and right edges.

License Plate 🇮🇹 Italy

Ireland stands out as it is the only place in Europe with yellow, diamond shaped warning signs.

Street Sign 🇮🇪 Ireland

The word ‘CALLE’ means ‘STREET’ in Spanish and often appears throughout Spain and Latin America.

Street Name 🇪🇸 Spain

Spain has a variety of different poles. Ladder-style poles are one of the more common ones.

Poles 🇪🇸 Spain

Greek warning signs are yellow with a red border.

Street Sign 🇬🇷 Greece

The Isle of Man has a small vertical red stripe on the left side of the plate.

License Plate 🇮🇲 Isle of Man

Vienna in Austria can be distinguished by its blue coloured street name signs.

Street Name 🇦🇹 Austria

Many Greek roads feature a double white or yellow center line.

Street Markings 🇬🇷 Greece

Directional signs in Luxembourg are yellow with black, all-caps text. The sign is completely surrounded by a frame.

Street Sign 🇱🇺 Luxembourg

Andorran license plates are less elongated than typical European plates. They also lack the blue vertical stripe of standard European plates. The left side of Andorran plates feature an orange blotch.

License Plate 🇦🇩 Andorra

The reflectors on the front of Austrian bollards are either blackish or dark red in colour. Seeing this black reflector and the black hat on the bollard is one of the easiest ways to tell that you are in Austria. No other countries have both of these features on their bollards.

Bollards 🇦🇹 Austria

Taxis in Greece have yellow license plates. All other vehicles have standard EU white license plates.

License Plate 🇬🇷 Greece

France has these utility poles with no holes but rather indents.

Poles 🇫🇷 France

The Dutch language appears across the Netherlands. It can often be recognised due to an abundance of ‘z’ and ‘w’ letters as well as double letters such as ‘ee’. The letters ‘i’ and ‘j’ also commonly appear together as ‘ij.’

Language 🇳🇱 Netherlands

The French region of Brittany in north-western France has bilingual road signs featuring both French and Breton.

Street Sign 🇫🇷 France

Spain uses wedge-shaped bollards with an orange rectangular reflector in the front and two white circular reflectors in the back. They are typically hollow.

Bollards 🇪🇸 Spain

Switzerland are known for their high number of window shutters. This house is so Swiss they have six pairs of them! Wooden houses are one of the more common types of Swiss houses.

Buildings 🇨🇭 Switzerland

‘Triq’ means ‘street’ in Maltese and this word appears all over Malta on signs.

Street Name 🇲🇹 Malta

There are two types of French bollard, both are the same distinct shape and different from typical European bollard shapes. This is the first type with a gray reflector strip running around it. The second type has a red reflector strip.

Bollards 🇫🇷 France

A typical Maltese scene comprises little vegetation other than grass, fields of different colours, a rock wall and everything in the landscape being close to the ground.

Flora 🇲🇹 Malta

In the Netherlands, it is common to see these blue arrow signs with white lettering. They point to the nearest town or city and make pinpointing much easier.

Street Sign 🇳🇱 Netherlands

In this image, there is a German word with ‘ss’ used as opposed to ‘ß’. The ‘ss’ is used in Switzerland whilst the ‘ß’ is used in Austria and Germany.

Language 🇨🇭 Switzerland

Many French roads have these very long, white dashes along both sides of the road. Nowhere else in Europe has such long side dashes as French dashes.

Street Markings 🇫🇷 France

Guardrails in Spain have these yellow-orange reflectors which are typically found every few meters. These yellow-orange reflectors aren’t found elsewhere in Europe.

Guardrails 🇪🇸 Spain

A license plate from the Netherlands with yellow European front and rear plates.

License Plate 🇳🇱 Netherlands

The easiest way to identify Belgium is via its license plates. Belgium has the standard European plates with a unique red lettering. This appears as a faint red blur on Street View.

License Plate 🇧🇪 Belgium

Cars in Malta have a mixture of standard European plates and plates that are less elongated with a blue section in the upper-left corner.

License Plate 🇲🇹 Malta

Spanish road markers are bright green, red, or yellow and show the road number on top of the sign.

Milestone Markers 🇪🇸 Spain

Buildings in Andorra are typically multi-storey, constructed with compressed gray stones, giving them a distinctive, affluent look. This stone construction style is a key identifier for the region.

Buildings 🇦🇩 Andorra

Italian is spoken across Italy and in southern Switzerland. Italian can be recognised as most of its words end in a vowel. In some cases, every single word in Italian sentences ends in a vowel.

Language 🇮🇹 Italy

Swiss bollards are often this curved-cylindrical shape. This is the front of the bollard.

Bollards 🇨🇭 Switzerland

Yellow, dashed edge lines on the road are quite common in Ireland but very rare in the U. K.. This is a good method to tell Ireland apart from the U.K.

Street Markings 🇮🇪 Ireland

In major Austrian cities, the word ‘EINBAHN’ is written on these blue signs everywhere.

Street Sign 🇦🇹 Austria

This is the most common type of Belgian utility pole. It is square shaped and contains small holes running up it- much like the Thai utility poles.

Poles 🇧🇪 Belgium

Minor roads in France are known as ‘D’ roads (departmental roads). They are denoted by the letter ‘D’ and a number inside a yellow rectangle.

Street Sign 🇫🇷 France