Computer Help and Support

ALL search engines rank things by popularity, and “put things at the top” that aren’t really most popular, or linked to.

The first so many results in Google are boosted by SEO (Search engine optimization) or just plan pay for placement (For a while they tried to completely disguise that ads were ads).


but even DuckDuckGo puts ads at the top. They just don’t keep profiles on you, but do tailor search results to your search term and location, unless you conceal it.

So, I’ll search for some high-tech topic and get results that include some pub 17 miles away.

OK bottom line. All search engines gotta make money.
They host ads, or get bribed to boost sites, or at the very least, get results boosted by SEO, including deceptive sites (i.e claiming to be HP or Apple or Microsoft support, but will drop remote access software on your system “You need this so I can help you remotely” and they hack you to bits and install keyloggers)

QUICK ANSWER
1. Vimeo has a free tier. I don’ t know of others.
2. There WAS a dmoz.org that sorted web sites by topic.
It has been replaced by https://curlie.org (which looks weird to me) and
http://odp.org/homepage.php (open directory project)

Happy searching or un-searching.