Sounds like that old site got bought by someone building a PBN (Private Blog Network). They buy old domains, get the old content from archive.org, and then add

Sounds like that old site got bought by someone building a PBN (Private Blog Network). They buy old domains, get the old content from archive.org, and then add a link in somewhere to their "money" site, or to another site in their tiered linking structure. It's a BS tactic that can sometimes still work, but it's a LOT of effort to really keep up with it. TBH it's much easier to just actually make a site people want to use and reach out to people who might be interested in sharing it. Hosting/managing 100's of sites just to prop up 1-2 money sites is too labor & time intensive for most of us. That said, there are some people making good money still using these tactics, as shady as they may be.