no one can index exponential amounts of data, nevermind the predatory SEO and AI.

Google is. The NSA almost undoubtedly is. A bunch of other governments are. AI companies probably are. Meta probably is.

When a user wants to search something up, they first search for a topic in web-rings, and then they select that web-ring.

From a usability perspective, that doesn’t feel great. How does a user find the first web ring search engine? What if they don’t want that multi step process? How do users avoid predatory web rings that are trying to sell them stuff? How does this compete with existing search?