They're hard to find because they're not really linked anywhere. We used to have Web directories arranged by subject headings that tried to be mostly comprehensive and put some serious curation effort into that goal, such as DMOZ.org - but there's no modern equivalent to that. People like to complain about how the whole SEO issue has made search results useless as of late, but that if anything is downstream of the overall lack of manual curation.

That's so true, it's almost like a return to the beginning (Yahoo Web Directory). We need to find a way to curate content that scales but in a way that eliminates the incentive for bad actors to try SEO-like approaches to game the process.

That feels impossible without a feasible alternative to the ad-based revenue model.

I always thought search engines could go back to using titles, description, and meta tags, but limit the number of characters/meta tags accepted.

Pinboard and similar bookmarking sites could play that role.

Blogrolls, folksonomies (tags), etc. just pretty much faded away once the web really went mainstream. How many people ever really used lists on Twitter?

Directories died because

a) Websites change hands frequently and enshittify rapidly.

b) Nobody was getting paid to check in on websites and make sure they were still on-topic

c) Most 'good' websites don't update every day, and people hate RSS and email signups. So activity and engagement on those sites are completely overshadowed by the bottomless pit of content that is social media.

They're also hard to find now because the web has become so much more than what it was back then. So many more people and companies are on the web now, so _good_ smaller personal pages make up a much smaller percentage of what's out there. I think this might be a larger cause of this issue than less curation.