I was wondering, there are plenty single word utterly cute, instant rememberable, super descriptive game names (like: Automobile, Dictator, Corporation, Empire) that are not taken by any recent game. Yet, after you try googling it you find out why... By using such name you simply make it impossible to find your game via google...

1) Do you think the memorable name outweights the "ungoogleability" (I'm talking here about indie devs, surely it would make no sense for an AAA title and a big company with a decent marketing budget since they can market even CrazyMuschroomEmpire :D)?

2) Any tricks (maybe add a second part to the title like "Automobile - The Story of Old Cars" or "Empire - The Conquest of Proxima Cluster")?

Be very careful about being ungoogleable - even if your game becomes popular, it will still make it harder for us.

I'll give an example. Although it's a piece of hardware and not a game, I sometimes have a horrible time finding relevant info on "Fire TV".

The bad side of "simple" names is that there is a high chance that you will be overshadowed by other things with such names in Google that have nothing to do with your game.

So you have to be in a middle point so people can google your game without ending in, say, Ford's Wikipedia page.

Talking about ungoogleable names, there was this game called "AAaaaaaahhhaaahh! To the awesome!" or something like that, I can't find it in Google :D

Ugh I hate ungoogleable names of things, searching for LaTeX or whatever that math documentation language is, is a dangerous thing =)

Some thoughts:

1) If you are not restricted to single-word name, sometimes when you put two simple words that are not normally used together you still get a memorable name that is googleable.

2) If you google "Risk" or "Monopoly", the game is listed. So I suppose if you want to use single word, just focus on making your game popular and it will show up.

3) If you picked a common word, when you refer to your game you could always refer to it along with your name. So, before "Velocity" is known as a game, when you refer to it, try to phrase it like "Acharis Velocity game". Then when people google it they might add "Acharis" or "game".

Attaching a subtitle will definitely help, but then you're relying on the googling-public to remember the subtitle...
Perhaps just two simple words would sometimes be enough, e.g. The Cute Dictator, Space Empire, etc...

I have a friend making a game called Wander, which is impossible to find on google under that word, but when you instead search for Wander Game, it comes up right away, so they refer to it as "wander the game" as much as possible so people remember to search for that phrase.

Just to add an example, there was a few years ago footage on gametrailers of a AAA first person shooter called "They"... and I remember thinking immediately about its ungoogability. The game is no longer in development by the way.

Something that I hate, but also recognise as useful, is names that are intentionally misspelt or not real words. The key is that they must be fairly phonetic to people search for the correct thing. So for example, search for "fuzzle". Easy to remember, in this case mainly returns results relating to the game "Oddworld". But something like that could be a game name in it's own right.

OK, it needs to be googleable, bad idea :) Thanks for pointing it out.