So I just did a search for “non-commercial web directory” (no quotes) starting on Mojeek.
Congrats: Mojeek held it together even 12 serp pages deep. Mojeek seemed to grasp the “non-commercial” holistically better instead of going off onto “commercial”. Yes there were commercial directories mixed in but at least they were directories. Of the SE’s tested Mojeek did the best IMO.
Brave - after the first 5 listings Brave search seemed to track heavily into commercial almost completely forgetting the “non-” bit. When you copy Google’s serps you get commercial.
DDG - This was the WTF serp. I went 4 - 5 pages deep and it was all a train wreck. I was getting health care providers! Lots of them. I’ve seen this before in Bing based queries although it’s been awhile, it’s like everything is just overwhelmed with spam on that subject. This was unusable.
Gigablast - results were not great but it seemed to understand I wanted a directory. Only hit the first page. Usable though.
Startpage - very commercial. Although it did return either directories or articles about directories: marketing directories, business directories - hardly what I would call non-commercial.
That’s it. Non-commercial is a trick term. Mojeek and Gigablast held the term together better. Mojeek was the best of the two - I kept going for 12 pages.
Directory is a term still mired in SEO and business spam all pretty much there selling PR. There must be thousands of pay-to-list directories most looking semi-abandoned. So the phrase “non-commercial web directory” is not easy to parse.
Anyway, good job Mojeek. I figure you hear complaints but you should also hear when you are doing it right.