Why Did My Photos Lose Their Location After Export?
The coordinates are in the .json files, not the photos. And some never had any. Here is how to tell.
Two different things are happening, and it helps to know which one you have.
For photos that did have a location, the coordinates came back in the .json file rather than inside the picture. No photo app reads those files, so your map looks empty even though the data is right there.
For the rest, there was never a location to lose. When Google has no coordinates it writes zeros rather than leaving the field out, and zeros are a real point in the Atlantic Ocean, so a careless tool drops your photos in the sea. Screenshots and chat images are almost always in this group.
The app writes real coordinates into the photo and treats the all-zero value as unknown rather than as a place. So your map fills in where there was genuinely a location, and nothing lands in the ocean. It can also add a place name to the filename, like Paris. The first 500 photos are free.