I was interviewing a nerdcore artist one time who goes by the name Doug Funnie. I said to him “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but there’s a cartoon character with that name. Makes you kinda hard to search for…”
I forget his exact response, but lets just say he regrets using that one, but is kinda stuck with it.
The magician David Copperfield also regrets cribbing a Dickens character for his stage name.
There’s a show just called ‘You’ on Netlfix, about a creepy murdery stalker dude.
I tried typing just ‘you’ into google, and YouTube comes up. But if I type ‘you show’ google gets it right.
One example from that thread - there was a short-lived tv sitcom called “United States,” which I had a terrible time googling for. On the other hand, today I tried “United States” tv program and the first result was
So naming my band “The Google” probably isn’t a good idea?
I’ll go back to my second choice, ?. Or maybe “?”.
How about calling it “Not Found”
With lead singer “404”.
This is the reason the group Chvrches is spelled wrong. They figured it would be easier to find in a web search versus “churches”.
At a convention I heard an author talk about how publishers will recommend book titles be changed so that they are easier to find in Google.
I just tried, googled cake, no quotes and it brought up the band. But honestly googling with “band” isn’t that big of a deal. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and there are so many things with the same name I always include “song” at end of my search terms.
And on that note, I bet searching for information about the Peugeot 404 requires specifying both the make and model. Which maybe isn’t so bad, but on the other hand I can just type “240z” into Google and I get what I’m looking for without having to type “Datsun”.
Even Googling “The Band” brings up the desired result. I think a lot of these searches have been fine tuned over the years by actual human beings at Google.
And nowadays I believe Google uses all the data they have about you to fine tune your search results. If they know you’ve searched for a lot of music related things in the past, you’re more likely to get the band. If you’ve done a lot of searches related to baking, you’re probably more likely to get the dessert. I bet if you’ve visited a lot of sites related to wedding planning you’ll get bakers offering wedding cakes.
Already taken (kinda)
While I’m here… this isn’t (quite) media, but it has proved impossible to google. The name of the poultry breed “Leghorn” actually comes from the anglicized version of the town name Livorno, a port in Italy. A port, you say? Yep, and it has a lighthouse. Oh, pleasepleaseplease…
Sadly, I have not been able to discover if there was ever a foghorn No matter how I structure them, searches for Leghorn Forghorn just don’t work out the way I want.
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Back in the 1980s, when I was in high school, there was a series of paperback horror novels aimed at young adults that I was rather fond of. Written by a bunch of different authors, all starring teenage protagonists going up against the supernatural. Cheap, but kind of fun.
Recently I got it into my head to try to do a little research on the series, and see if anyone else remembered it, if any of the authors had gone on to bigger and better things, and so forth. But the series proved difficult, nay impossible, to track down via Google.
Why? Because the name of the series was “Twilight.” Of course any search for Twilight or any variations on it (Twilight books, Twilight series, Twilight YA books, etc.) brought up a much more famous series of novels. Maybe you’ve heard of them.
I finally tracked down the fact that the full name of the series I was remembering was “Twilight: Where Darkness Begins.” Search that, and you can find it. But if all that you remember is “Twilight,” you’re out of luck.
Something like Twilight or Madonna is sort of the reverse. It would be hard to search for the non-media meaning. You probably need to search for “twilight time of day” if you are interested in the time of the day.
And if there was a band named Rubber they might be hard to find. Neither Rubber or Rubber Band would work. I guess Rubber Musical Group would.
I remember I heard a Christmas song that I loved and all I could remember was the tune and the line “All I want for Christmas is you” but it was not the Mariah Carey song. Because of the MC song it was just impossible to Google. It was not played very often at Christmastime back at the time but eventually years later I heard it again and that time I could get the title (All Alone at Christmas by Darlene Love).
True, when I Google “Red Velvet” I get the k-pop girl group, not the cake. I wonder if that’s true for other people.
Actually this is MUCH more of a problem for me. I’m frequently forced to search through pages and pages of search results to get to what I need.