World Wide Web Watchlist

A search engine designed to surface smaller, text-heavy and independent websites.

Why we're watching One of the clearest attempts to build search specifically for the independent web.

A search engine focused on lightweight, personal and old-school websites.

Why we're watching It offers a distinctly different experience from commercial search.

A stream and collection of writing from independent websites and personal blogs.

Why we're watching A major search company is placing meaningful attention on the small web.

Free hosting and community tools for personal, creative and hand-built websites.

Why we're watching One of the most important modern homes for personal websites.

A community and hosting service for creative personal websites.

Why we're watching It represents a newer generation of interest in personal web publishing.

A human-curated directory focused on independent websites.

Why we're watching Curated discovery may become more valuable as search results grow increasingly concentrated.

An index of directories, search engines and discovery projects covering the independent web.

Why we're watching It helps map the expanding ecosystem of small-web discovery tools.

A human-curated collection of thoughtful, unusual and interesting websites.

Why we're watching Strong editorial curation can make web discovery feel personal again.

A collection celebrating websites with total page sizes under 512 KB.

Why we're watching It makes fast, efficient web design visible and competitive.

A list of websites built to remain under an even stricter 250 KB limit.

Why we're watching It demonstrates how much can be accomplished with very little page weight.

A collection of useful and attractive websites smaller than one megabyte.

Why we're watching It provides an approachable performance target for ordinary site builders.

A directory of websites that work without client-side JavaScript.

Why we're watching It promotes resilient, accessible and dependency-light web design.

Interactive explanations, games and simulations covering social, scientific and philosophical ideas.

Why we're watching A leading example of the web being used for something richer than static text.

A collection of interactive essays and educational simulations.

Why we're watching It documents an important creative format unique to the open web.

An interactive globe for listening to live radio stations around the world.

Why we're watching A memorable combination of maps, culture and live global media.

A collection of views recorded through people's windows around the world.

Why we're watching A simple idea transformed into an unusually human web experience.

A procedural recreation of Jorge Luis Borges' imagined library containing every possible page.

Why we're watching It remains one of the web's strangest and most ambitious conceptual projects.

A random doorway into amusing, experimental and intentionally unnecessary websites.

Why we're watching It preserves the playful spirit of web discovery.

A nonprofit archive preserving websites, books, software, audio and video.

Why we're watching Few institutions are more important to the long-term memory of the web.

A vast library of free public-domain ebooks.

Why we're watching A durable example of public knowledge made globally accessible.

Research and visualizations covering global health, economics, population, technology and other major subjects.

Why we're watching An exceptional model for making complex public data understandable.

A collaborative, openly licensed map of the world.

Why we're watching One of the strongest examples of community-built digital infrastructure.

A searchable gateway to historical maps held by collections around the world.

Why we're watching It turns scattered historical collections into an accessible discovery system.

Millions of openly available images and digital materials from Smithsonian collections.

Why we're watching It makes extraordinary cultural resources available for reuse and exploration.

Write a letter to your future self and have it delivered later.

Why we're watching A simple utility with unusual emotional staying power.

A global collection of unusual places, stories and cultural curiosities.

Why we're watching It turned the discovery of obscure places into a recognizable destination.

Visual essays combining data, journalism, design and interactive storytelling.

Why we're watching It continually demonstrates the storytelling potential of the browser.

Interactive visualizations of spacecraft, planets, asteroids and Earth systems.

Why we're watching A powerful example of public scientific information made exploratory.

A browser game about combining basic elements to discover increasingly complex objects.

Why we're watching A polished example of a browser-native game reaching a broad audience.

Geography games built around identifying locations from street-level imagery.

Why we're watching It transformed public map imagery into a durable game format and community.