They had web rings. You could find a website without knowing the address or deal with publicity gatekeeping of the first corporate search engines. GeoCities and such hardly paid attention to who or what started a website. You could ask someone with related content to give you a link and like minded people would start web rings and when you went to another site you could find they are in more than one web ring. You could have a website with illegal or morally questionable content and not get caught for years before a webhosting company or government demanded it be shut down. Search engines are sucking again like in the mid to late 90's but worse in the number of search suggestions they limit you to. I don't know why people don't go back to having webrings for small sites. They all use established social media to make a pseudo webpage can ban you for unrelated bullshit reasons. Not designed for archiving easily accessible from a website. The old web hosting company system only banned you for related content. If you have a neo Nazi website and a website about a hobby you enjoy that is non controversial, only the Nazi website got banned if someone noticed it.