Try out kagi...they have a filter for "smallweb" posts: https://kagi.com/smallweb

The list of sites is on github: https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb

When you want that kind of content, you should use a different search engine which makes it easy to find.

https://search.marginalia.nu/

It's wild to think about how anybody found info back in the day. Forums were probably the big one I guess? There was always something magical about being linked to forum and finding a wealth of info there, and entire domains of knowledge.

FWIW stuff linked from HN & friends is not always the best, but I am pretty agressive about sticking RSS feeds from blogs that get linked here. That gives an inflow of interesting stuff people find. It's not a thing you can do in one go, but after a while you have a lot of neat stuff from people who cared enough to post it.

Back in the day you got actually useful results from search engines.

Yahoo was originally a text file small enough to fit on a 1.44 floppy disk

webrings, IRC, forums and mailing lists, etc.