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 

Finding the location you are interested in

You can find the location you are interested in by entering a place name or postcode in the search box and tapping the Search button. 

You can then use the zoom controls on the bottom right to zoom in as needed.

Set View options

Tap View - Basemap Settings and select Clean. This avoids the superimposition of information on the image such as the names and locations of shops, businesses and places of interest. Generally you only want the image itself (and objective data such as latitude and longitude, and the North pointer):  not anonymous commentary. 

Tap View - Show Historical Imagery.  

Adjust the boundaries of the display panel so that the image is slightly taller than it is wide. 

Finding the historical images you are interested in

Click on the Historical Imagery bar to select the year you are interested in. Google Earth will then display an image taken that year. 

You may find that part of the image displayed is made up of more than one captured image and this will be apparent because two distinct sectors of the image are shown with different lighting conditions, and different shadow lengths, so that there is a discernible straight line between the two. As you move the cursor from one sector to another the date range at the bottom left (just to the right of "data attribution") will change to show the date of the image of each sector. If the bottom left date shows a date which is the first of the month, or the last of the month, that could mean that the sector image just happened to be captured on that exact date but more often it indicates that Google does not know the exact date of capture. Google does not itself operate any satellites but purchases images from companies which do. Consequently Google does not always know the exact date - or even month - that each of its images were captured. Some images purchased from suppliers might have been in batches labelled simply "summer 2007" so that, although in this example every image is known to have been captured before the autumn of 2007, the exact month is not known. Or a batch might have been labelled simply 2007 in which case only the year is known.     

Saving Google Earth images

If you will be saving an image together with the Historic Imagery bar it is important to make sure that the year shown on the time bar is not misleading so you should, first of all, move the cursor around the displayed image to check that, even if it is made up of sectors with different dates, they are at least all the same year as the year showing on the time bar. If any sector actually has a different year, you can zoom in so as to exclude that sector from the display (if you actually need to save the excluded sector then do a second save for that).   

Use the mouse/touchpad to 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. You may have to adjust the scale so that the whole screen, including the Historical Imagery bar showing the year captured, appears in the print Preview. Then tap OK to create the PDF.

Do make sure that the PDF print does include the Historical Imagery bar. Webpage designers may design their webpages with a stylesheet so that a slightly different format appears when printing as compared to the screen display - this is typically used to take account of the fact that, for example, a print is divided into pages whereas a screen display is continuous. But sometimes a webpage design is not perfect so that the print not only has a different format but may omit items such as the Historical Imagery bar. If you hit this problem, one solution is to save a screenshot rather than doing a print-to-PDF. But before resorting to a screenshot you could try using a different computer. A webpage can be designed to detect the attributes of the display - such as resolution - and to use that information to modify the display (e.g. perhaps using ordinary text where more stylist graphics might be used for a computer display with higher resolution) but, depending how the webpage is written, it might also modify the print stylesheet so it is worth trying a print-to-PDF on a different computer before considering resorting to a screenshot.

Typically you will only be interested in images of a single locality. If you are obtaining images of multiple distinct areas then add a brief description to the filename when saving - e.g.

2003 GoogleEarth Image - Rose Cottage.pdf

2003 GoogleEarth Image - Park Farm.pdf 

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: there is also a desktop version of Google Earth called Google Earth Pro but using that is slightly more complicated than using the web version.      

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