In the early days the portals were great and you could find most anything by browsing them; click on topic, go through the subtopics and get a list of websites

In the early days the portals were great and you could find most anything by browsing them; click on topic, go through the subtopics and get a list of websites on that topic, if those did not have the information you needed you went to the links pages/web rings on those sites and you would get what you needed soon enough. It was quicker than scrolling through pages and pages of modern day google results and trying to game the search terms. These were all personal pages you would be browsing and one of the things you would do in those days to get your page noticed is register it on Yahoo and the like. You were able to explore the internet in a way you can't anymore.