I paged through the first 90 pages now and still not a single CC BY NC track listed. perhaps this was a strange one time fluke occurrence? i can’t seem to reproduce?

it looks like you guys must have accidentally changed the drop-down filter on the upper right to All Licenses — the filter at http://dig.ccmixter.org/fre... defaults to Free For Commercial Use so this shouldn’t be causing an issue…?

Thanks for looking into this so promptly.

It is interesting the dig.ccmixter free music page doesn’t allow “all licenses” to be enabled yet the search engine produced results that fetch the page in that state.

We didn’t touch the dig.ccmixter results page. Tested this again today and it still comes up in error. Here is how we got to the MUSIC FREE FOR COMMERCIAL USE dig.ccmixter page with the “all license” license filter enabled when the page is fetched via Chrome.

(1) Using Chrome search Google using ‘texasradiofish free for commercial use’

Click on the this or similar Google response pointing to dig.ccmixter

Music Free for Commercial Use - ccMixter
dig.ccmixter.org/free_music?dig-lic=&offset=910‎
Music Free for Commercial Use. Cry Wolf by … To the Best Time of the Year by texasradiofish. Unbounded by RizkeyG. My Eyes Are Open by texasradiofish.

(2) We have also reached the erroneous page by searching Google for “texasradiofish”.

(3) Testing with Firefox yielded the same results.

(4) When Google searches using “free for commercial use”, the correct dig.ccmixter license filter is enabled. Also noticed that the http://dig.ccmixter.org/fre... page does not permit the “all license” filter to be enabled.

(5) When searching dig.ccmixter for “texasradiofish” with the “free for commercial use” filter enabled, the results are correct.

(6) Using the search ‘texasradiofish free for commercial use’ or ‘texasradiofish “free for commercial use”’ criteria with Bing, the correct results were provided when the dig.ccmixter page was fetched.

(7) Tried Google again using ‘texasradiofish “free for commercial use”’. Some of the search results were is error, some correct.

TRF

hmmmmm….will need to investigate deeper into why Google isn’t producing the results that dig.ccM produces and intends. thanks for the heads up!

Quote: texasradiofish
dig.ccmixter.org/free_music?dig-lic=&offset=910


The error seems to be in the URL above.
Although the dig.ccmixter/free_music page doesn’t allow all licenses to be enabled manually you can call this via address bar.

dig.ccmixter.org/free_music?dig-lic=safe does a proper search for “Free for commercial use” using the free_music page.

Leaving the dig-lic value empty will search for all licenses:
dig.ccmixter.org/free_music?dig-lic= does a search for all licenses using the free_music page.
So the ambiguous result is that you see the heading “Music Free for Commercial Use” and have music of all licenses listed below.

This is exactly correct.

Like most relatively modern sites, ccMixter relies on URLs (assembled through MVC patterns or parameterized queries) to figure out what the user wants to look for.

The simplest answer, really, is to use the site as designed, if you don’t want surprises - changing the parameters in the URL bar is going to change the site behaviour, no matter what the text or graphics say on the page you started off with.

Put even simpler, “don’t do that!” :)

Suggesting the world of searchers (who are happily unaware of this conversation) and search engines not to do something doesn’t seem a solution.

The problem remains search engine users getting erroneous results.

Except for the fact that they are not. The URL is a real one, in that it does not produce 500 errors, 404 errors, or 302 redirects.

Google’s weighting system places less importance on how your links work, and a great deal more on what linked resources from elsewhere point at.

I would reiterate that the best (and only supported) way to use ccMixter is to use the site itself, in the way it is designed to work. We really can’t control how others - Google or not - decide to re-present our services.

Quote: Admiral BobPut even simpler, “don’t do that!” :)
Tell this the Google Search Engine. :)

Quote: dig.ccmixter.org/free_music(select name=”dig-lic” id=”dig-lic” size=”1”)
(option value=”“)All licenses(/option)
(option value=”safe”)Free for commercial use(/option)

Both values (“” and “safe”) are defined for the parameter “dic-lic” in dig.ccmixter.org/free_music. So I assume Google crawls the site with each of them which leads to those ambiguous results.

Improved handling of URLs with parameters
This might help to tell Google not to do this. :)

Sounds like a suggestion for the ccMixter admins.

I know zero about web servers so some questions. Web site software filtering out erroneous and ambiguous parameter strings, at least once the test case is identified, is not an option? Can the web site software detect and reject requests for “all license” and “free for commercial use” in the same parameter string? Why is it on the search engine to be more robust?

Thanks for the problem determination, P

ccMixter, like a lot of sites these days, uses a model view controller pattern to present its face to the world. hitting /free_music is basically just a way of setting up the selection defaults on the same form you’d use for any other query - so the options don’t change.