Okay, this is a small thing, but I’m curious…
According to his official website, the singer with the moustache spells his last name R-I-C-H-I-E. Which is a bit of news to me, since I’ve been spelling it R-I-T-C-H-I-E for a while now. But a quick Google search using the last name turns up numerous references to the same performer, with the bad spelling.
What gives? Wouldn’t it make sense for everyone to reference the guy with the same name he uses?
My 1983 edition of The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll and my copy of his latest Greatest Hits compilation both list his surname as R-I-C-H-I-E, the former with the suffix “Jr.”.
Hmm. I just realized I may have slightly missed the point of your post.
I guess it’s the same reason we have Elvis Prestley and Lucy O’Ball. 
Strangely (or not so strangely when you think about it), non-native speakers of English (guess it’s the same with French, German or any alphabetical language) don’t have the same problems that native speakers have with regard to these mis-spellings.
It’s all to do with the way we conceptualise things (schematically). I happened to ask my (Chinese) wife yesterday if she’d ever spelled Michael as “Micheal” and she said no. The reason I asked was because our 8 year old mixes them up too.
Re misdirected Google searches, I’ve actually coem across some very fine sites via a mistaken (mispelt) search. Most recently for the tsunami-struck Thai resort area Khao Lak (which I rendered Khao Lat). Was in some pretty good company, including a couple of national newspapers.
From countries where English is the native language, of course…