Obtaining historical Google Earth images

There are many commercial aerial photograph suppliers which will provide copies of historical aerial photographs for a fee. In addition, free copies of historical satellite photographs can be obtained from Google Earth at earth.google.co.uk See below for how to use Google Earth. Use a computer rather than a mobile device.

Finding the location you are interested in

To find the location you are interested in, first enter a place name, or postcode, or longitude and latitude in the search box and tap the Search button. 

You can tap View - Basemap Settings (or tap the small square showing a miniature map/image) to change from, for example, satellite images to a map, and to highlight shops and other businesses, places of general interest, boundaries and roads etc. Use whatever helps you find the exact location you are looking for.

You can click and drag the image to centre the point of interest, and zoom in as needed.

When you have found the location, choose a Basemap Setting of Satellite and Clean as generally you only want to capture the satellite image itself (and objective data such as the distance scale) and not anonymous commentary. When you do a search a dropped pin appears with the "save to project" panel: simply close the panel and the dropped pin will disappear leaving a clean satellite image.    

If you are using the web version of Google Earth on a computer, you can see the date of the image in the narrow grey bar at the bottom (just to the right of the words "data attribution"). You may find that different sectors of the displayed image have noticeably different lighting conditions. This might be because a cloud is casting a shadow over part of the image, but if it appears that different length shadows are cast by objects on the ground, such as trees and buildings, in one sector compared to the other sector, and especially if the apparent dividing line between sectors is of a shape untypical of a cloud, then the more likely explanation is that the displayed image is actually a multi-date imagery mosaic - a collection of images taken at different dates and blended together. To check you can move the cursor around to see whether the date shown in the narrow grey bar at the bottom (just to the right of the words "data attribution") changes as you move from one sector to another, disappearing  for a moment on the boundary between sectors where the images are blended together.

Finding the historical images you are interested in for the location

Initially Google Earth displays the latest image it has for each location (or at least a quite recent image - it may not be quite the latest if a slightly older image is significantly clearer) but you can access images for a number of historical dates using the web version of Google Earth by tapping View - Show Historical Imagery (or tapping the symbol on the menu bar). This causes the Historical Imagery bar to appear containing a series of black dots for each year for which an image is available (some black dots may have one or more grey dots following them indicating the availability of additional images on dates throughout the year). You can click on a dot to see the historical image. The dot becomes larger and turns blue when you click on it and a date is shown in blue.

You can move the cursor around the image to see whether the date shown in the narrow grey bar at the bottom (just to the right of the words "data attribution") changes, indicating that a mosaic image is being displayed. The blue date in the Historic Imagery bar will not change when you just move the cursor as it should be the date of the sector within in the display which has the most recent date, but the blue date may change if you zoom in or out, or drag the image, because sectors with different dates may then move in or out of view so that the date of the most recent sector in view may change.

If the grey-bar date shown for an image is the last day of the month, that could mean that the image you have the cursor on just happens to have been captured on that exact date but, more often, it indicates that Google does not know the exact date that image was captured. Google does not itself operate any satellites but purchases images from data providers which do operate satellites or who commission aerial photography or themselves purchase satellite/aerial imagery from others. Consequently Google depends on date information provided by the data provider. For satellite images the data provided should always include the exact date of each image, but for some aerial images, particularly images taken before 2010, Google does not always know the exact date - and sometimes not even the exact month - that all of its images were captured. Some aerial images purchased from data providers might have been in batches with the batch being identified as e.g. "June 1995" or perhaps just "1995" and with the exact date of each particular image within the batch not known. So for these images Google Earth shows the image with a grey-bar date in which the day-of-month is arbitrarily set to the last day of the month, with the month set to the last month of the year - 12 - in the case of a batch simply identified by year, or to the appropriate month where all the images in the batch are known to have been captured in the same month. For example if a batch is identified as "June 1995" then the date would be shown as 30/06/1995. The data provider obviously knows that the images must have been taken before it received them but, with regard to the date of the start of the range, the data provider is completely dependant on information from the company which actually captured the images. Consequently there can sometimes be greater uncertainty as to the start month of a date range than as to the end month and, in some cases, Google may not be sufficiently certain of the start month of the range to make it available. So, in conclusion, if, for any purpose you have in mind, the precise date of images is important it is best to avoid, if possible, using images with a last-day-of-month date.   

Saving historical Google Earth images

To save a historical image as a PDF, proceed as follows:-

1. Select the dot in the Historical Imagery bar representing the image to be saved. If the Historical Imagery bar is collapsed - i.e. just an oval with a date and chevrons - you can tap on the date to expand it to show the full bar so that you can then select an image by tapping a year dot or, alternatively, you can leave the bar collapsed as an oval and just tap the forward or back chevron to select the required image date.

2. When saving a historic image it is important to make sure that the image is of a single date (not a multi-date imagery mosaic) that the date is accurate and that the date is clearly shown in the saved image.

   • • To achieve this, first move the cursor around the image to check whether the grey-bar date changes. If it does then what is displayed is a multi-date  mosaic. If it is a mosaic but only a small area of the displayed image, on the periphery, which you do not need to save, shows a different grey-bar date when you place the cursor on it, and everywhere else on the displayed image shows the same date, you can use the cursor to narrow the window to make it approximately square so as to exclude the area with a different grey-bar date from the display. If necessary you can also zoom in and/or drag the image as well. If it is not just a small area on the periphery which has a different grey-bar date, but areas central to what you are interested in also have different dates, consider whether you actually need to save the currently displayed image or whether an alternative available historical image dated slightly later or slightly earlier might be sufficient for your needs and, if so, start the procedure again (from the first bullet point above) selecting the alternative date. Similarly if an area which is central has a last-day-of-month grey-bar date (indicating that it is not an exact date) consider selecting an alternative date.

     • If you have had to zoom, drag, or narrow a mosaic image in order to end up with an image all sectors of which have the same grey-bar date (i.e. so that the displayed image is no longer a mosaic but is a single image of one exact date) then the blue date should have automatically changed to be the same as the grey-bar date. But sometimes the blue date does not automatically change and instead just turns black - indicating that the date shown is no longer the date of any sector in the display. If the blue date turns black like this, just use the chevrons next to the black date to align the date with the grey-bar date - i.e. if the black date is later than the grey-bar date, tap the left chevron, or if the black date is earlier than the grey-bar date, tap the right chevron, so that the black date turns blue and matches the grey-bar date without the displayed image changing.

3. If you have, up to this point, had the full Historical Imagery bar showing, now tap the "collapse" symbol on the  bar to reduce it to just a blue date in a oval bar.

4. Use the cursor to slowly narrow the width of the window so that it is slightly taller than it is wide. As the window narrows the distance scale in the grey bar at the bottom will also narrow and then it will disappear. Continue slowly narrowing the window and the whole grey bar will disappear and, at the same time, the blue date in the oval bar will jump to the bottom and the distance scale will then reappear to the right of it.

5. Tap on your browser's Print button and select a printer of PDF to create a PDF copy of the displayed image in A4 portrait. In the print panel you may have to adjust the scale to ensure that the whole displayed image, including the blue date in the oval, appears in the print preview. Then tap OK to create the PDF. You will be prompted to specify the filename of the PDF to be saved. 

Repeat the above process for any other historical dates you wish to save an image for.

Note 1: Google does not make available, in Google Earth, all the images is owns. If, some time after you have displayed an image, Google acquires another image for the same location taken the same year, then next time you use Google Earth to look at that location for that year a different image might be displayed. This would in general normally be at least as clear as the previous image but it could be a worse image from your point of view - e.g. most of it might be clearer but there might just happen to be a long shadow obscuring the particular point you are interested in. So, when you find the image you are looking for, make sure you save it when you find it because if you don't save it then, and you go back to it a month later, there is a possibility that that particular image might no longer be available. 

Note 2: the mobile version of Google Earth has no facility to show the date of each sector in the display. There is a blue date showing the date of the most recent sector image but you cannot tell whether or not the image is a mosaic. So the mobile app may be useful as an initial rough guide if you don't have your computer with you but to be sure of the date - particularly if you are going to save a image as a PDF for future use and want to be sure it is a single image with a precise date and not a mosaic - it is better to use the web version from a computer.     

Note 3: As explained above some historical images in Google Earth may have grey-bar dates which are last-day-of-month dates and probably only approximate. If it is not possible to avoid using those images - i.e. if you need to save an image showing something particular and the only image which shows it is a last-day-of-month dated image - then the first thing to do is to double-check whether the last-day-of-month date is actually a precise date. In 97% of cases a last-day-of-month date indicates the end of a date range, but in 3% of cases it actually is a precise date - the image just happened to have been taken on the last day of a month. To find out which is the case, download the desktop version of Google Earth, known as "Google Earth Pro" and find exactly the same image in Google Earth Pro. Google Earth on the web and Google Earth Pro indicate date ranges in different ways: with Google Earth Pro the date on the bar at the bottom is the start date of the range whereas in Google Earth on the web the date on the bar at the bottom is the end date of the range. So, for example, if an image has an inexact date being somewhere between 01/01/1995 and 31/12/1995, Google Earth Pro will show 01/01/1995 whereas Google Earth on the web will show 31/12/1995. But if the image actually has a precise date of 31/12/1995 then both Google Earth Pro and Google Earth on the web will show the same date of 31 December 1995. So if it turns out to be a precise date you can use the image in the usual way.

But if (as will usually be the case) it turns out to be an image with an inexact date (a date only known to be within a specified range) but you need to use it because it is the only image which shows some particular feature (or if it is the only image which shows in unbroken form a particular feature of interest lying on the boundary between images, and so is a mosaic image and not of a single date) then you should save the displayed image with the full Historical Imagery bar - which just shows the year. To do this:

• Using Google Earth on the web, ensure that the Historical Imagery bar, with its black dots marked with each year, is visible: if it is currently just an oval showing a blue date with chevrons, tap on the blue date to expand it to the full bar.

• Use the cursor to slowly reduce or increase the width of the window. The width should be as narrow as possible but not so narrow that the Historical Imagery bar jumps to the bottom of the window. If the Historical Imagery bar has jumped to the bottom, you need to increase the width slowly just until the bar jumps back to the top. 

• At this point the Historical Imagery Bar should show the year of the image marked with a large blue dot. You can then do a print-to-PDF.

Having, in the saved image, the full Historical Imagery bar, showing year only, emphasises the year of the image rather than an exact date. But it is true that a full date showing last-day-of-month (giving the latest possible date) will also still be shown in blue to the left of the Historical Imagery bar, so when saving the image you should indicate that only the year (or only the month and year) should be relied on like this: 

1995-06-01 ~ Jun 2005 ~  GoogleEarth Image.pdf

1995-01-01 ~ 2005 ~  GoogleEarth Image.pdf     

so that nobody using the image you have saved is misled into thinking that the date is exact.  

Disclaimer

This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.

The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.

This page was lasted updated in August 2025 Disclaimer