Entertainment For Lively Minds
SEO and Music
If you work in online media, you have to spend a distressing amount of time worrying about "search engine optimisation". Or, as it's more properly described, "gaming Google." That is, describing something in such a way that it ranks very highly in any Google search for a relevant term.
So, how does this apply to band names? Because I've just searched my iTunes library for "The The". And it didn't find anything, even though I've got all Matt Johnson's albums in the library. Presumably because iTunes ignores "the". The same problem occurs when searching for "The The" in Google. The mighty G just ignores the definite article.
Oops. Suddenly, Mr Johnson is expunged from reality (which is really what we mean when we say "not found in Google"). So which other band names are particularly ill-suited to the Googleverse? The Band? CSS (stands for "Cascading Style Sheets" in geekville)? Any others?
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Well...
A
!!!
Archive
µ-sic
Live
Apparently
If you type in
THE WORD
it only finds it if you are a subscriber
"Free"
always brings up one or two inappropriate hits
Maps
Given the incredible usefulness of online mapping programmes, Maps the band are quite hard to find on google with a one-word search.
Ash are beaten by the science geeks (Action on Smoking and Health and American Society of Hematology) but at least make the front page. Gene, however, are nowhere to be seen.
Others I've just tried that were surprisingly successful included; James, Cake, The Bees, Battles, Gomez and Ride.
wait a minite...
SEO isn't Senior Executive Officer anymore, where did my memo go...
is there... something I should know?
Any artist with a symbol instead of a name
e.g. TAFKAP or that band from the early eighties who were variously known as squiggle (after their logo) or Freur...
Hold on though
Can't speak for itunes but the mighty Google has no problem with this at all:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=the+the&btnG=Search&meta=
returns me a good set of results and also helpfully suggests I might like to "See results for: the the matt johnson".
I thought "and and and" (as in the Commitments) might be a problem, but no, Mr Google can cope with that too.
You're right
Hmm, you're right. I put quotes around it to emphasise it was a name, which is what broke Google:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22the+the%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rl...
Oddly, this is what you're *supposed* to do if you want to search for a phrase.
Quotes
It works if you search Google images. Go figure.
http://images.google.co.uk/images?&q=%22the%20the%22
Bread
Instead of the band, the first hits are all for some music magazine.
It's almost impossible to find
anything about the band Dogs using Google. But that's probably a good thing since they're not great.
There's other google fun to be had, for instance finding out who is more Google famous. Put a first name in and see who wins. Who are the top five Bobs? (in order) Bob the Builder, Bob Paisley, Bob Dylan and Bob Geldof. Steve Jobs beats Steve Irwin and while John lennon may or may not be bigger than Jesus, he certainly beats John the Evangelist in the Google fame game followed close behind by John Peel and John Barrowman. Luckily Jim Morrison just pips Jim Davidson at the post.
Man
are a great cause of searching difficulty in a number of music related contexts. If you take the trouble to tell Amazon it should restrict its search to 'Music' it works, but if you forget that they sell other stuff, you're bu66ered. It's really frustrating, er, man.
If
Even worse, if you try to browse as "too few letters" gets spewed back or used to when a friend (never me) was trying to bit torrent their stuff as a taster. I have since bought their excellent first LP, available on CD thru' some mighty obscure label. For Colosseum fans, I would have thought, primarily.
Arnold
the 90s beat combo on Creation Records don't fare too well