What is geotagging? How photo location data works

6 min read · Updated 3 Oct 2026

Geotagging is adding geographic coordinates (latitude, longitude and sometimes altitude) to a photo or video. The coordinates are stored inside the file's metadata, usually in EXIF GPS fields, so photo apps can show where each picture was taken on a map, sort pictures by place and search them by location.

What does geotagging mean?

The word is used in two related ways, and it helps to keep them apart:

• Location metadata in the file. The coordinates are written into the image itself. They travel with the file when you copy it to a computer, back it up or send it to someone, unless an app removes them. This is what photographers usually mean.
• A place tag on a post. On social networks, "geotagging" often means picking a named place (a city, a park, a restaurant) when you publish. That tag lives in the platform's database, not in the image file.

This guide is about the first meaning: the latitude and longitude embedded in your photos.

How does geotagging work?

A geotag needs two things: a position and a way to attach it to the right photo.

On a phone, the camera app asks the operating system for the current location at the moment you press the shutter. Phones combine satellite positioning (GPS and other satellite systems) with Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth signals to get a fix quickly, even indoors. The camera then writes those coordinates into the photo as it saves it.

On a dedicated camera, it depends on the model. A few cameras have a built-in GPS receiver. Others can borrow the location from a paired phone through the maker's companion app. Most interchangeable-lens cameras do neither, so their photos arrive with no location at all.

After the fact, software can add coordinates later. The most accurate way is to record a GPS track while you shoot and let a photo tool match each photo's capture time to the track. Every photo already has a timestamp, so if you know where you were at 14:32:10, you know where the photo taken at 14:32:10 was made. Our guide on how to geotag photos walks through each method.

What a geotag actually stores

In JPEG, HEIC and most raw files, location lives in a dedicated group of EXIF tags. Some apps store it in XMP metadata or a sidecar file instead, especially for raw files they don't want to modify. The most common GPS fields are:

ExifTool's reference lists every GPS tag in full on its GPS tag names page. A geotag does not contain an address or place name. Apps that show "Lisbon" or "Central Park" look that up from the coordinates themselves.

Three ways photos get geotagged

1. Automatically, at capture. A phone with camera location turned on, or a camera with GPS or a phone link. Zero effort, but it only works for photos taken on that device.
2. From a GPS track. You record where you walked with a phone or GPS logger, export the track as a GPX file, and a photo tool on your computer matches photos to the track by time. This is the usual answer for cameras without GPS, and it is accurate to wherever you actually stood.
3. Manually, on a map. You drag photos onto a map or type a place. Good for a handful of shots or for fixing a wrong location; slow and approximate for a whole day of shooting.

Why photographers geotag their photos

• Finding a spot again. The exact coordinates of a viewpoint, a doorway or a trail junction are far more useful than a memory of "somewhere near the harbor".
• Browsing by place. Lightroom Classic, Apple Photos, Google Photos and digiKam can all show a library on a map and search or filter by location.
• Captions and records. Travel, documentary, real-estate and field-research work often needs a verifiable location for each image.
• Telling the story of a trip. A map of a day's photos shows the route and the order in which things happened.

Does geotagging photos help SEO?

Not in any meaningful way. Google's John Mueller has said there is no need to geotag images for SEO, and Google has never listed EXIF location as a ranking factor for web pages or image search. There are practical reasons too: many content management systems, image CDNs and social platforms strip EXIF metadata when they resize or recompress an upload, so the coordinates often never reach the published page.

If you want a page to rank for a place, the signals that matter are visible ones: a descriptive file name, useful alt text, a caption and body text that name the location, and a page that genuinely answers the search. Geotag your photos because it helps you organize them, not as a search tactic.

Geotagging and privacy

A geotag is precise. A photo taken at home and shared with its metadata intact can reveal your address, and a series of photos can reveal routines. Before you share, think about who gets the original file:

• Sending a photo by email, as a file attachment, or through a cloud link usually sends the full metadata, location included.
• Some platforms strip location on upload, but behavior varies and can change, so don't rely on it.
• Your own archive is a different matter: keeping location in private originals is useful, and you can remove it from the copies you share.

How to turn geotagging off on iPhone and Android

iPhone

1. Open Location Services. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services.
2. Select Camera. Scroll the list of apps and tap Camera.
3. Choose Never. New photos will be saved without coordinates. Choose While Using the App to turn geotagging back on.

To remove location from a photo you already took, open it in Photos, tap the More button, then Adjust Location and No Location. Apple documents these steps in its guide to managing location metadata in Photos.

Android

The setting lives in the camera app, and its name depends on the phone maker. In Pixel Camera, open the camera's Settings, tap More settings and turn off Save location, as described in Google's Pixel Camera help. On Samsung phones the equivalent camera setting is called Location tags. You can also deny the camera app location permission in Android's app settings.

Removing location from existing files on a computer

ExifTool can delete every GPS tag from a file in one command. It keeps a backup copy of the original by default:

exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpg

Turning geotagging off on the phone does not affect photos from a camera. If you shoot with a camera and want locations added later instead, read how to geotag photos, or see geotagging from a GPX file for the exact steps in Lightroom Classic, ExifTool and digiKam.