Legal Name instead of Artist Name appearing in google search results

MusicBrainz
1

Hi,

While this is probably something strange happening on google’s side in their way to interpret the data, i have noticed a strange behavior that i think is related to me entering our discography in musicbrainz. Ever since i registered our discography, the search results for the artists have gotten one of those fancy boxes on the right-hand sides, which gives a track-list and some nifty info. Fine dandy cool! The thing is that one of the artists have their legal-name input in musicbrainz artist relationships. And as of recently, when searching on this artist, it is the legal name that shows up.

It’s a not huge problem since this person needs not to protect it’s identity, but it’s strange.

I’m thinking i might have done something wrong, although i am not the person who entered the legal name in the first place. The artist in question is “Sakrecoer” ( a2899399-d1d5-462f-9d56-ec1ea78cc4b6 ) a search on any of his performance names will display the legal name in that fancypancy box. This does not happen to say, Legowelt for example, who in turn has gotten many more Nicknames.

Anyone knows if this is something that is adjustable from within musicbrainz, or if i should just wait and see if google will learn, or until my emails get through the probably super-busy helpdesk over at google?

Thankful for any hint!

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2

Could you paste here a link to what you mean. I google searched but didn’t see any cool info box.

3

Thanks for getting back to me! :slightly_smiling:
Here is a screen shot:

google_sakrecoer.png1211×637 59.6 KB

I’m not logged in to google, and it happens regardless the language settings… Except the .com version shows the box without the tracklist.

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4

Strange, here is what I get (I am logged into Google):

And then, if I click on the link in the box, I get this:

Oh, there is actually someone over there? I always thought it was a black hole :grinning:

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5

Google has declared it intentional that they combine different names; I don’t know how they choose which one to display as the “main” name, though. Personally, when I search on Google, I get the same result as @davitof.

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6

Thank you guys! I really appreciate you taking the time!

I reckon google aka the black feedback-hole, has mysterious ways and that we will have to live with this…

I was mainly curious to know if i had done something wrong within musicbrainz that needed to be fixed. If its not the case then, all good! :slightly_smiling:

7

I get “reSet Sakrecoer” on google.com, but “Set Hallström” on google.se, so it’s a language thing.

I doubt there’s anything you can do to fix Google from here, though… :slightly_smiling:

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8

Looks like maybe google.com is finding a completely different artist, http://musicbrainz.org/artist/6f412e06-0a2b-4cca-9623-9fb9ca950e5e vs. google.se finding http://musicbrainz.org/artist/4380b6a0-6d74-405f-980e-4a4817229374

Might be fixable with aliases, though I’m not sure if google really understands Musicbrainz’ alias values.

It might also just be the particular way the various search terms appear and are prioritized by the various language search engines.

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Thanks a lot guys!!!
Yeah, you probably right about the language thing… oh well, it’s not like the legal name is supposed to be hidden or needs to be hidden anyhow. The fancybox thing is pretty neat anyways. What’s technically bothering is that, since the .se version looks for “Set Hallström” it doesn’t find the matching youtube videos. But the .com version does… Anyways, I entered feedback, emailed them… don’t think there is much more to do about it, so i give up… for now :smile:

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10

Might be worth noting that we had similar discussions earlier, e.g.

http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=5758

I know there was another one in the old forums where an artist had a similar issue with the Google result, but looks like the topic got deleted.

It looks like Google does use MB aliases, but it is not totally clear how and it sometimes leads to not ideal results.

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11

Thank you! I’m going to read that. I did try to search first if there was an existing thread or a someone with a similar issue, but failed miserably apparently. Sorry about it…

12

I think @Hawke’s on the right track here, there seem to be duplicate entries for the artist.
Both share “Sakrecoer” as one of their aliases and the black box that is Google just picks a different one for .com and .se.

Merging the artists into one should resolve this specific case.

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13

To be fair, it was in the previous forum, so you didn’t even need to know about it :slightly_smiling:

We asked Google about this not too long ago, and as @chirlu said, they answered that they intentionally merge all personas for an artist (even when they’re different artists in MusicBrainz). I have no idea how they pick the name to display though!

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Thank you guys! :slight_smile:
Indeed, i tried to just change the language settings of google yesterday and English displays the name “correct”; all releases appear to be made by reSet, even the Simio one…

[quote=“Leo_Verto, post:12, topic:1722, full:true”]Merging the artists into one should resolve this specific case.
[/quote]

@Leo_Verto That is interesting, i found this about it: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Aliases and it clearly states this is not a use case for merging into aliases. Anyways it’s not like the guy is making it easy… :smiley: Looking at the ID3 of the latest releases, the name has evolved to be just “Sakrecoer”. I’m in doubt.

One could hope google would understand that the legal name has nothing to do there in that context… But here i am, trying to make it right… :smiley:

15

oh… well…
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Artist#Performance_names_and_legal_names

What do you reckon? Should i go on and merge?

16

Artists should be merged if they’re alternative names for the same project, but not if they’re separate side projects with their own identity.

I wouldn’t merge any of these. (and it won’t fix the Google search problem.)

19

4 years later and this is still a problem for some artists:

:weary:

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I did ask Google again in the meantime (a few months ago). It’s not even consistent worldwide - one artist has complained that while in Western Europe he saw his performance name correctly, but when in Eastern Europe he saw his (Russian) legal name. The only answer I got is that “The artist’s best strategy is to suggest a change, particularly if they can claim ownership of the identity” (but not sure how well that works at all, I’ve seen artists frustrated that nothing happens when they do that too).

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