I rely on browser history to go back to where I was. I don't count on tabs as much because once I have half a dozen tabs open It gets hard to tell which is which and have to rely on recalling the sequence. :O

Bookmarking is a little different, I've sorted them into folders and categories: Services, Utilities, Gov, Local, Tools, etc. and throw new ones loose in the mix so they'll stand out until sorted.

I keep 16-20 "daily use" bookmark icons on the tool bar.

Rarely have more than 4 tabs open at any given time, usually just two. Each tab takes memory and new process on the cpu. I could, of course, add more memory to the machine, but why? I can't read more than one at any given time, so open what I need, clear the rest when I'm done.

Browser history is kept to "current month", archived bookmarks are separated into folder.

Engine: What do you do about browser tabs and bookmarking management?

I can share, but regarding your case (in order to be helpful), I guess it depends on your personal use and needs, why do you need or have to deal with so many bookmarks. I rarely keep open tabs (if ever), right now I have only 10, and will go down fast.,

Here is my approach.

- In general, I'm a shooter, meaning I try not to keep pending stuff. Both for email sand web pages, if something is there, it's because it's pending, needs reading or some action, so I focus on that, I do it, kill the pending, and the list goes down fast. It's a bit related to what Mark Cuban describes about how to deal with lots of emails, well... simply, deal with them and reply as fast as possible to get rid of them. Same goes to my Whatsapp, whatever is open there is pending, and has to be deal with in the short term.

- Reusing data. Just an example: I'm doing some work right now and I need some HTML entity codes, I may end up with multiple open web pages in tabs, but in the end... I will put all of that data on one hand made webpage that serves as my personal reference and reuse. Easily 5-10 tabs become one (and local), and I also avoid unneeded browser extensions.

- Last but not least: research, reading & archive. I rarely use bookmarks at all, instead I use read it later (GetPocket), now integrated on Firefox. I use this not just as a "read later" (without ads), but mostly as my fully personal archive of data. Whatever is there can be accessed via multiple devices, like diff computers, tablets, or my cell phone. And I don't mark the articles as "read" so, this way all the content remains in the same place as if it was a digital magazine. The benefits are quite diverse, among managing data, you can also get the lite versions (full content, NO ADS), fast and easy. And a plus: people removing the articles from the web RARELY has any effect on your library (if any). I keep articles that are no longer online, and only once I noticed the user deleting the article had impact on my list. Archived items preserve the original URL for you to visit whenever you want to.

I know work can get complex at times, but usually, tabs are mostly a personal thing rather than anything else. I was also exploring the options to mix this with a book reader, but gave mine away so I'll have to buy a new one later.

* The 10 pending tabs mentioned above are going thin as I read, deal with the info, reply, and close respectively. As a general rule (and there is literature about this), only what's useful right away should be on our field of view, otherwise it becomes a distraction.

All I can say is, you’re not the only one who has trouble keeping track. In site logs I routinely see someone arriving at suchandsuch page via, say G### search ... and then later in the day they return to the same page again from the same search. That suggests they either don’t remember that they’ve already investigated this particular search result (and are color-blind so they don’t notice that the link has already been followed?), OR they’ve never heard of browser history. There are additional possible explanations, but all of them annoy me.

I never clear my browser history, so I can generally trust the browser to come up with the right place when I type a few letters into the address bar. x, say, takes me directly to ...

...xkcd is my guess.