People passionate about sharing and learning will always be driven to produce quality content, even if they don't have an audience.
Those people moved to content websites like YouTube and Udemy where they can cash in on what they do. They don't make websites any more, so Google doesn't find links to them.
While cash is probably some component of it, it's a lot more difficult today to make a professional looking 'modern' website than it was 20 years ago. Conversely, it's a lot easier to make and edit a professional looking video for YouTube than it was 20 years ago. Video will win out when it's the easiest solution.
Google indexes and returns links to YouTube videos for queries now and will even point you to the relevant part if the video uses chapters.
> it's a lot more difficult today to make a professional looking 'modern' website than it was 20 years ago
STRONGLY disagree. Wordpress is plenty professional looking and modern, and makes it dead simple to find a hosting service, create a site, choose a theme, and start writing content.
From the technical end, absolutely, way easier. From the design end, definitely not. Compare Nintendo's website in 2002[0] and today. Blue's News hasn't really changed layout in a long time and it looks substantially different than a more modern style like IGN which is much more difficult to reproduce.
I can take a video with my phone and upload it to YouTube from my phone. My phone camera can work surprisingly well in poor lighting conditions. I can spend < $100 dollars and get a couple of cheap ring lights and improve the lighting massively. If I wanted to make a spoof news show, I'd just need OBS and a good webcam or a cheap DSLR now. Way easier than in 2002 where I'd need a Video Toaster and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment.
Those people moved to content websites like YouTube and Udemy where they can cash in on what they do. They don't make websites any more, so Google doesn't find links to them.