> One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing

> One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information. I was around when it started. Let me tell you there was a massive amount of SEO going on back then. The big driver to Google back then was that it was a crawler not directory, so you could get newer results. But most importantly the search was clean and the landing page was empty. All the other search pages were so rammed with crap and asking to install ask Jeeves toolbars. Google was minimal. Webrings were the main way to find indie sites for me anyway. Digg was always good too