Regarding your bookmarks, sometimes library or government sites just update things and the same info was moved elsewhere on their site. Trying Googling whatever site it was and it may pop up. For more "homemade" sites, the Wayback Machine may show how the site looked in years past -
https://archive.org/web/What you are going to be able find for free depends on the state. This site has lots of good links for vital records and other sources by state/county -
http://deathindexes.com/sites.html Some of it leads to pay sites, but much of it doesn't.
On some pay sites, you can see enough of a snippet from results to know if it has anything helpful. Newspaper archives on Genealogy Bank and Newspapers.com are two examples of this. I often find it helpful to Google (whatever city/town) newspaper archives, and it will give links if there is anything online. Mentions in newspapers may help narrow down someone's date of death or show if they married.