If you're searching for people, you can start with a basic search engine, or use a more specialized search engine, or people finder.
Switchboard Find long lost relatives, source for finding people, has snail mail and e-mail search.
The ancestral search engine of Mormon origin, with its 500 million or so indexed names, is a great genealogical tool. The Library of Congress has one of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications. Lycos Directory another Portal, has a great resource page. The Lycos Genealogy Page has many resources to get you started on your searching. There's some great Genealogy Guides, some specifically designed for web surfers.