Quick answer
The short version
Search history and bookmarks with broad topic words rather than titles, then narrow by the period or the project you were working on.
If the page is gone from both, look for a screenshot of it, people capture pages far more often than they consciously remember doing.
01 · Method 01
Search browser history.
If you roughly remember when you visited the site, history is still the fastest option and the most underused. Search broad terms rather than exact titles: two ordinary words that appeared on the page beat one guessed headline.
History also survives the case where you never actually bookmarked it, which, statistically, is most of them.
02 · Method 02
Search bookmark titles.
Use fragments: product names, topics, people, a distinctive phrase. Titles are weak, but they're cheap to search, and one word is often enough.
03 · Method 03
Search the subject.
If the title is gone from memory, search the idea: “visual memory”, “local-first software”, “design research tool”, “pricing psychology”.
This is the query your memory actually produced. A system that can only match titles will fail it; one that indexes page text or meaning usually won't.
04 · Method 04
Use context.
What were you doing when you saved it? Which project? Which question were you trying to answer? What related pages did you save in the same sitting?
Saved links cluster around questions. Find one link from that cluster and the rest are usually beside it.
What you remember
“Something about local-first apps I read while we were deciding on sync.”
What you get back
The essay, plus the three things you saved next to it that week.
05 · Method 05
Use time as a clue.
Even a rough memory like “around March” or “while working on the redesign” helps, because it converts an unbounded search into a bounded one.
If your tool can't filter by period, sort by date added and read, a month of bookmarks is a short list.
06 · Where Shelf fits
Searching the memory rather than the folder
When you keep a link in Shelf, it keeps the readable page text, a short description of what the page is, the date, and its connection to the other things you kept around the same question. Search combines exact words with meaning, so a remembered subject is a usable query.
That's the practical difference: you search what you remember about the page, not what you remember about where you put it.
Search the memory.
Not the folder.