Take the Great Pyramids of Giza, for example. Google Earth lets you take impressive sightseeing tours of areas you’ve always dreamed of visiting.

You can drag the man icon to the street to get down to ground view.īeyond address search, Google Earth lets you find any location on Earth by business name, GPS coordinates, and even keywords.

Zoom in closer to get a detailed overhead satellite view of your home.

You’ll see your address in the search results.

Use the search field in the top left to enter your street address.

It’s a great way to plan out your walking tours, choose the best locations to see in person and identify hidden gems you’d have a hard time finding otherwise. You can essentially view detailed satellite images of the area, and explore the location on the ground. It provides traffic information, driving navigation, and many other features that are valuable for planning a trip.īut if you’re looking to get an in-depth view of an area before you visit it, Google Earth is the right choice. If you want to plan out a driving route of an area, Google Maps is the way to go. In areas visited by Google frequently, you can zoom down to the ground and take a 3D “walking tour” of the area, such as this example in Paris, France.Įach tool has its place. This satellite view example above goes back as far as 1998. Not only does Google Earth provide higher resolution satellite imagery at a much higher zoom rate, but it also lets you swivel the camera perspective, view how the location has changed over a timeline, and “land” down to ground level to view the landscape topography of an area. Google Earth, on the other hand, lets you continue zooming almost to ground level.

The view above is as close as Google Maps lets you zoom into the action. For example, look at the satellite view in Google Maps of a rural house in Maine. Google Maps satellite view is pretty impressive, but it doesn’t provide the detail or the features that Google Earth offers. View how locations have changed throughout history.Measure distances of any location on Earth.

Google maps satellite street view