[bcRIPster]

In 1994, the main way you found websites was mostly from hub sites that maintained large libraries of links to other sites (like a directory), newsgroups (UUCP/Usenet), friends in IRC trading links, AOL, Delphi and Compuserve forums and print magazines. Webcrawler was revolutionary when it came on-line in 1994, but there were no comprehensive search engines that had a high index count until probably 1996.

The mother of all link directories started from NCSA who distributed the first web browser (Mosaic) and they ran a site where they would publish a monthly list of "What's New" on the web. They pulled the pages from their site a few years ago but fortunately I made a mirror on my server for historical reference that you can check out here:

http://www.kitchencloset.com/realstuff/ncsa/whats_new-archiv...

Enjoy!

edit: forgot to mention web rings someone else just mentioned.

[Torgo]

I remember circa-1994/1995, our library got a book called something like "World Wide Web Yellow Pages" and it was a printed book of a couple hundred pages of curated web URLs. Even then the irony was not lost on me. Why didn't they just put it online? The answer was, well, then how would you find that?

[chebucto]

Many sites, including most home pages (remember those?) had a page of links, a small curated set of links[1]. Ooh, and guestbooks! Thousands and thousands of guestbooks!

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/19991022011955/http://www.geociti...

[elleferrer]

Mosaic, totally remember those WorldWideWeb days.