The web isn't what it was 10 or 15 years ago. Back then, you could stumble across countless useful and unique websites on just about any topic—travel included.
Today, it's different. I do think Google played a major role in shrinking the visibility of the independent web. If Google only shows 300 links per search (30 pages x 10 results), anything beyond that effectively doesn't exist for most users.
Some might argue that only the top few results matter, but I disagree. For broad topics like "video games," "war," or "love," you'd expect there to be thousands of worthwhile links—not just the same recycled content from YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, or SEO-heavy content farms.
As a side project, I run a hobby web crawler to explore what's still out there. That's where my perspective comes from regarding the current state of the open web: