Every location on Raw States is placed by hand. We start with what is in the frame: street signs, store numbers, business names, landmarks, the shape of a building, a court or a pond. We match those against current and historical satellite imagery and street-level imagery until the angle in the video lines up with the ground.

When the frame is not enough, we go to the record: the original upload and the creator's own posts, court and arrest records, police response records, official meeting recordings and news reports.

Some locations are suggested by readers through rawstates.com. A suggestion is never placed until it has been checked the same way. Where the person in the video has confirmed the location publicly, we say so. Historic sites are placed from the documented record.

Coordinates are given to four decimal places, which is accurate to roughly 30 feet. Where the finding of a location has been written up, it sits on that pin's page, in the same words as the Instagram post about it.