mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Revisiting IM2GPS in the Deep Learning Era

arXiv 1705.04838 ↗First posted 13 May 2017cs.CVcited by 79

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Abstract (arXiv)

Image geolocalization, inferring the geographic location of an image, is a challenging computer vision problem with many potential applications. The recent state-of-the-art approach to this problem is a deep image classification approach in which the world is spatially divided into cells and a deep network is trained to predict the correct cell for a given image. We propose to combine this approach with the original Im2GPS approach in which a query image is matched against a database of geotagged images and the location is inferred from the retrieved set. We estimate the geographic location of a query image by applying kernel density estimation to the locations of its nearest neighbors in the reference database. Interestingly, we find that the best features for our retrieval task are derived from networks trained with classification loss even though we do not use a classification approach at test time. Training with classification loss outperforms several deep feature learning methods (e.g. Siamese networks with contrastive of triplet loss) more typical for retrieval applications. Our simple approach achieves state-of-the-art geolocalization accuracy while also requiring significantly less training data.

Key facts. Cited by 79 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 13 May 2017.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 7; 2022: 4; 2023: 7; 2024: 12; 2025: 24; 2026: 25.

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  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2023GeoCLIP: Clip-Inspired Alignment between Locations and Images for Effective Worldwide Geo-localizationcited by 185
  3. 2021Online Continual Learning with Natural Distribution Shifts: An Empirical Study with Visual Datacited by 67
  4. 2022Where in the World is this Image? Transformer-based Geo-localization in the Wildcited by 58
  5. 2023Where We Are and What We're Looking At: Query Based Worldwide Image Geo-localization Using Hierarchies and Scenescited by 55
  6. 2023PIGEON: Predicting Image Geolocationscited by 55
  7. 2023Learning Generalized Zero-Shot Learners for Open-Domain Image Geolocalizationcited by 41
  8. 2024OpenStreetView-5M: The Many Roads to Global Visual Geolocationcited by 38
  9. 2024G3: An Effective and Adaptive Framework for Worldwide Geolocalization Using Large Multi-Modality Modelscited by 33
  10. 2021Interpretable Semantic Photo Geolocationcited by 32
  11. 2024Img2Loc: Revisiting Image Geolocalization using Multi-modality Foundation Models and Image-based Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 31
  12. 2022Investigating the Role of Image Retrieval for Visual Localization -- An exhaustive benchmarkcited by 27
38 more
  1. 2024GeoReasoner: Geo-localization with Reasoning in Street Views using a Large Vision-Language Modelcited by 27
  2. 2025Recognition through Reasoning: Reinforcing Image Geo-localization with Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 27
  3. 2024Around the World in 80 Timesteps: A Generative Approach to Global Visual Geolocationcited by 23
  4. 2025Geolocation with Real Human Gameplay Data: A Large-Scale Dataset and Human-Like Reasoning Frameworkcited by 23
  5. 2021Leveraging EfficientNet and Contrastive Learning for Accurate Global-scale Location Estimationcited by 19
  6. 2024Granular Privacy Control for Geolocation with Vision Language Modelscited by 19
  7. 2025GeoRanker: Distance-Aware Ranking for Worldwide Image Geolocalizationcited by 18
  8. 2025GRE Suite: Geo-localization Inference via Fine-Tuned Vision-Language Models and Enhanced Reasoning Chainscited by 14
  9. 2021Visual and Object Geo-localization: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 13
  10. 2024Statewide Visual Geolocalization in the Wildcited by 12
  11. 2023MOPA: Modular Object Navigation with PointGoal Agentscited by 11
  12. 2024Towards Interactive Global Geolocation Assistantcited by 11
  13. 2025GT-Loc: Unifying When and Where in Images Through a Joint Embedding Spacecited by 11
  14. 2025From Pixels to Places: A Systematic Benchmark for Evaluating Image Geolocalization Ability in Large Language Modelscited by 11
  15. 2024CityGuessr: City-Level Video Geo-Localization on a Global Scalecited by 10
  16. 2025Scaling Image Geo-Localization to Continent Levelcited by 10
  17. 2025GeoLocSFT: Efficient Visual Geolocation via Supervised Fine-Tuning of Multimodal Foundation Modelscited by 9
  18. 2025NAVIG: Natural Language-guided Analysis with Vision Language Models for Image Geo-localizationcited by 8
  19. 2022Transformer-Guided Convolutional Neural Network for Cross-View Geolocalizationcited by 6
  20. 2025LocDiff: Identifying Locations on Earth by Diffusing in the Hilbert Spacecited by 6
  21. 2025GraphGeo: Multi-Agent Debate Framework for Visual Geo-localization with Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networkscited by 6
  22. 2025GeoToken: Hierarchical Geolocalization of Images via Next Token Predictioncited by 6
  23. 2025GAEA: A Geolocation Aware Conversational Assistantcited by 5
  24. 2025Where on Earth? A Vision-Language Benchmark for Probing Model Geolocation Skills Across Scalescited by 5
  25. 2026GeoAgent: Learning to Geolocate Everywhere with Reinforced Geographic Characteristicscited by 5
  26. 2022Which country is this picture from? New data and methods for DNN-based country recognitioncited by 3
  27. 2024Computer Vision for Multimedia Geolocation in Human Trafficking Investigation: A Systematic Literature Reviewcited by 3
  28. 2025Image-based Geo-localization for Robotics: Are Black-box Vision-Language Models there yet?cited by 3
  29. 2025Towards Interpretable Geo-localization: a Concept-Aware Global Image-GPS Alignment Frameworkcited by 3
  30. 2026Learning to Wander: Improving the Global Image Geolocation Ability of LMMs via Actionable Reasoningcited by 3
  31. 2021Intra-Class Uncertainty Loss Function for Classificationcited by 2
  32. 2023Divide&Classify: Fine-Grained Classification for City-Wide Visual Place Recognitioncited by 2
  33. 2025VLM-Guided Visual Place Recognition for Planet-Scale Geo-Localizationcited by 2
  34. 2025Assessing the Geolocation Capabilities, Limitations and Societal Risks of Generative Vision-Language Modelscited by 2
  35. 2025Enhancing Contrastive Learning for Geolocalization by Discovering Hard Negatives on Semivariogramscited by 2
  36. 2025GeoSURGE: Geo-localization using Semantic Fusion with Hierarchy of Geographic Embeddingscited by 2
  37. 2026TIGeR: A Unified Framework for Time, Images and Geo-location Retrievalcited by 2
  38. 2026REVERSE: Reinforcing Evidence Verification and Search for Agentic Image geo-localizationcited by 2

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