Debugging entity matching issues

Google has found an item in the Knowledge Graph that nearly matches an entity from your feed, but the name value is different. Check that you are using the proper name for this entity.

There are the name matching issues shown in the report:

• Entity name cannot contain the subtitle: The name you provided includes the subtitle of the movie or show. The name property should be only the name, and not include the subtitle. For example, don't specify "Viking Dead: The Lost Viking Fleet Of Roskilde," but rather "Viking Dead".
• Name contains possibly descriptive term: The name contains descriptive terms that aren't actually part of the title. For example, not "Movie: Red" but "Red".
• Name contains unnecessary phrase: The name includes other unnecessary phrases that are not part of the official name. For example, not George Washington: The Example History Program" but "The Example History Program".
• Update the entity name to match the value currently known to Google: Another unspecified naming problem was found. Read the tips below to learn how to fix the issue.

Here are some tips for finding the name to match a known property in the Knowledge Graph:

Use an authoritative source for the name

If this is a movie or television show or series, check authoritative sources for the title: for example, the official web page for the movie, IMDB or Wikipedia. We strongly recommend using the sameAs property to provide the URL of your source for the definitive name.

Don't include version dates in the title

For example, "1984" is an appropriate film name, but not "Godzilla (2014)". If you want to distinguish your entity from another Knowledge Graph item with the same name that was released later, use the releasedEvent.startDate property to specify the date. If a TVEpisode lacks a proper name, see here.

{
  "@type": "Movie",
  "@name": "Godzilla (2014)",
...
}

{
  "@type": "Movie",
  "@name": "Godzilla",
  "releasedEvent": {
  "@type": "PublicationEvent",
  "startDate": "2014-05-16"
  }
},

...
}

Don't include the word "Movie" or "Series"

Don't include the words "Movie" or "Series" unless they are actually part of the title, or the item has no proper name. For example:

{
  "@type": "Movie",
  "@name": "Movie: Red",
...
}
{
  "@type": "TVSeries",
  "@value": "Series Friends"
...
}

{
  "@type": "Movie",
  "@name": "Red",
...
}
{
  "@type": "TVSeries",
  "@value": "Friends"
...
}

Provide different titles for different locations

If the movie has different titles in different locations, provide them:

"name": [
  {
    "@language": "en-us",
    "@value": "Airplane!"
  },
  {
    "@language": "en-au",
    "@value": "Flying high?"
  }]

Remove unnecessary punctuation

Remove unnecessary punctuation if they are not part of the official name. This includes | (pipe mark), "quotation marks", -hyphens-, [brackets], (parentheses), and emojis.

For example, not "Cupcakes (the movie)" but simply "Cupcakes"

Remove HMTL entities and escaped Unicode

Don't use HTML entities or Unicode escaping. The only entities that must be escaped are double quotation marks. Other characters, if needed (and they are probably not), can be used directly. Examples:

• "Get your \"game\" on" (escape needed for " marks)
• "Lilo & Stitch" (no escape needed)
• "Ender's Game" (no escape needed)

Use only properly translated names

Provide the name in the released language for this film. After that, you can provide the name in additional languages as part of the name array value.

Do not provide multiple language names in a single string; instead, define a name array and provide the name in each language in a separate array entry.

Do not use an arbitrary translation of the title for different languages. If the movie has an official title in additional languages, you can provide them; otherwise, don't provide unofficial title translations.

Do not transliterate a name from another language into your language.

{
  "name": "Example | Ejemplo"

"name": [
  {
    "@language": "en",
    "@value": "Example"
  },
  {
    "@language": "es",
    "@value": "Ejemplo"
  }]

{
  "name": "Les Real Housewives d'Orange County"
...
}

{
  "name": "The Real Housewives of Orange County"
...
}

"name": [
  {
    "@language": "cn-hk",
    "@value": "警察故事"},
  {
    "@language": "en",
    "@value": "jing cha gu shi"}
]

"name": "警察故事"

"name": [
  {
     "@language": "cn-hk",
     "@value": "警察故事"},
  {
     "@language": "en",
     "@value": "Police Story"}
]

Provide alternate titles

If official alternate names are available in the same locales, you can use the alternateName property to fix or avoid a matching error.

{
  "name":"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),
...
}

{
  "name":"Birdman",
  "alternateName": "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance",
...
}

Don't include additional information in the title

For example, don't include phrases like the following in the name:

• Online course
• Documentary
• (Comedy)
• [English subtitles]
• [Japan/US]
• [Free/Paid programming]

A good rule of thumb: If you have extra information in the movie title and you have a mismatch issue, try removing it.

{
  "name": "The Mask (Comedy)",
...
}

{
  "name": "The Mask",
  "genre": "Comedy",
...
}

{
  "name": "(吹) さまよう刃",
...
}

{
  "name": "さまよう刃",
...
}

{
  "name": "Planet Money Comics: Micro-Face",
...
}

{
  "name": "Micro-Face",
  "partOfSeries": {
    "@type": "TVSeries",
    "@id": "12345", 
    "name": "Planet Money Comics", 
    "sameAs": "https://www.npr.org/transcripts/992365334" },
...
}

{
  "name": "Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of the Four",
...
}

{
  "name": "The Sign of the Four",
...
}

{
  "name": "An evening with Sherlock Holmes"
...
}

{
  "name": "An evening with Sherlock Holmes: Live from Boston"
...
}

Unnamed TVEpisode entities

If an episode has a proper name, use that. If an episode has no name, use one of the following values for the name, translated into the film's language:

• Episode <<number>> (Preferred) - Where <<number>> is the episode number.
  • "name": "Episode 2"
  • "name": "2화"
• Episode YYYY-MM-DD - If there is no episode number, provide the local time original air date in the format YYYY-MM-DD. If there are more than one episodes without names on the same day, provide the time as shown in the next bullet. Examples:
  • "name": "Episode 2018-10-01"
  • "name": "Эпизод 2018-10-01"
• Episode YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM - Used when there are multiple unnamed episodes during a single day. provide the local time original air date in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM. Examples:
  • "name": "Episode 2018-10-01 20:00"
  • "name": "Эпизод 2018-10-01 20:00"

{
 "@type": "TVEpisode",
 "name": "Season 2: Game changer",
...
}

{
 "@type": "TVEpisode",
 "name": "Game changer",
 "partOfSeason": {
   "@type": "TVSeason", 
   "@id": "12345",
   "seasonNumber": 2 }, 
...
}

{
  "@type": "TVEpisode",
  "name": "Episode 14: The Pilot",
...
}

{
  "@type": "TVEpisode",
  "name": "The Pilot",
  "episodeNumber": 14
...
}

{
  "@type": "TVEpisode"
  "name": "",
  "episodeNumber": "7",
...

}

{
 "@type": "TVEpisode"
 "name": "Episode 7"
 "episodeNumber": 7
...
}

{
 "@type": "TVEpisode"
 "name": "Épisode 7"
 "episodeNumber": 7
...
}

{
  "@type": "TVEpisode"
  "name": [
      {
        "@language": "en-us",
        "@value": "Episode 7"
      },
      {
        "@language": "fr",
        "@value": "Épisode 7"
      },
     ],
  episodeNumber: "7"
...
}