For example (just as rough proof of concept)
Research articles: Pretty much any academic library website for published stuff, arxiv.org for white papers in computer science and math, pubmed for biosciences
audio equipment: gearspace.com
Encyclopedia: Wikipedia
Thesaurus: Wordhippo.com
The idea is to avoid needing to visit a search engine. Might be a high idea.
Remember webrings?
I like the sociable aspect of webrings, literally paying it forward and backward to two arbitrary websites on your own website. However, I don’t see how it helps searching for and finding a specific website as one would have to traverse the whole ring. A search engine incorporating the whole ring resolves this though.
As for OP’s specific question, synced bookmarks go a long way. I’ve also got quick terminal commands so I can immediately search on a website without having to open the browser and going to that website first.
A Secret Web by Benjamin Hollon [found on lobste.rs] is a great read; there I discovered nifty little search engines that specifically search the Small Web, such as Marginalia Search.