But before Google there was nothing to search. You had to know exactly where you wanted to go and one type left you nowhere. I remember when we got dial up around the mid 90's my dad told me I need the exact web adress, or it's not working. Wild times.
There were also "web rings" which basically amounted to crappy HTML snippets you put on your website, and you'd be in a linksharing ring with other sites of similar topic etc. It was supposed to drive traffic between the sites.
Circa this time there were 10,000 teenage kids with nearly identical Dragonball Z sites, hosted on GeoCities, Homestead, or other free services.
But, when google came in, they were great. They completely backpedaled on what they were and have turned into the number one destroyer of the modern internet.