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.    

As 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 dark 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.

As well as the possibility that the image may be a mozaic, another reason why the blue date may not be the exact date of the image is because sometimes Google does not actually know the exact date that an 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 from the data provider. For satellite images the data provided should 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 "summer 1995" or perhaps just "1995" and with the exact date of each particular image within the batch not known. But in every case the image shown should be the same year as the blue date and not more recent than the blue 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.

2. 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 there will come a point when the Historical Imagery bar jumps to the bottom and the grey bar disappears. It is important to do this because the grey bar date displayed can depend on cursor position so could be potentially misleading if captured in a PDF print of the whole image. 

3. 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. 

4. Tap OK to create the PDF. You will be prompted to specify the filename of the PDF to be saved. 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 (giving the latest possible date) will also still be shown in blue, so, when prompted for the filename of the PDF to be saved, you should indicate in the filename that only the year should be relied on like this: 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.  

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 it is possible that 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 generally has more limited facilities so it is better to use the web version from a computer.

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 December 2025 Disclaimer