Find yourself on Google Earth!
Find yourself on Google Earth
What's coming up?
It's easy to find your way around in Google Earth so you can explore every corner of the world.
In this activity, you'll learn about searching for locations, zooming and the Street View function.
Start activityA regular atlas
A typical paper atlas offers a view of the entire world and maps of most of the countries, but there's obviously not enough room to include every suburb of every city. Google Earth offers so much more.
Much more than a regular atlas
Google Earth starts with the view from space and lets you click anywhere on the globe to zoom in. As you do, the map automatically adds more detail, from international borders and the names of cities, to the details of the terrain.
See more or less
In the bottom left of the screen, the Layers button provides a range of options for how maps will appear, including:
- Map Style: add borders, landmarks, roads labels and more.
- Custom: lets you change the look and feel of your Google Earth, with things like clouds, landmarks, and water.
- Additional layers: see 3D buildings, photos, and even a timelapse of Earth from 1984 until today.
Search for things
The Search function in the top menu bar lets you type in a location you want to visit.
You can enter the name of a continent, region, country, state, city, suburb, or street to zoom there across the globe. It can also understand search queries, such as capital of France.
Apart from places, you can also search for buildings, stores, and other landmarks by name.
Narrow it down
In Google Earth, you can even narrow your search to a specific address. Typing 140 George St, The Rocks, NSW into the Search field, for example, returns an aerial view of the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay in Sydney.
Find yourself
Now that you know how to use some of the features of Google Earth, type your own address into the Search window and see what happens.
Don’t forget to check Photos to see images around where you live, and Map Styles for additional information about landmarks and places.
eSafety tip
When you use Google Earth, you’re looking at recent aerial and ground-level photos rather than real-time images. That means people can't use Google Earth to spy on you.
True or False?
Click on each card to find the answer.
You can only search for cities and countries on Google Earth.
This is false, you can also search for continents, states, exact addresses, suburbs, buildings landmarks and even shops!
You can search for a phrase such as capital of Canada or a phrase like coffee in London.
This is true! Try searching for library in Darwin to see what libraries you can visit in Darwin.
Well done!
You’ve completed the Find yourself on Google Earth! activity. You've learned that it's easy to find any location in the world – even your own home – and then zoom in to get a good look.
Next, you'll learn how to delve a little deeper into Google Earth in the activity Exploring the world with Google Earth.
