The web is a vast resource of material for the family tree developer. There are some sites that are dedicated to recording family tree information and making them available often at the cost of a subscription or on a search by search basis. See the Web links for some of these.

On the same Web links page you will notice there there are also sites dedicated to a family name and you can read the discussions that happen there and make your own contribution - you will usually need to register with the group but they are usually free.

When it comes to searching the web itself - using search engines like Google, Yahoo search, etc. - you need to be aware of a number of issues.

1. Search engines recognise a collection of letters - they don't know whether they are names, items or topics. Thus searching for the surname "miller" will produce 17 million pages with a mix of items like Miller Brewing Co, Miller Welding Equipment, Miller property group, etc. as well as people whose name is Miller.
2. Search engines cannot distinguish first names from surnames.
3. You need to be aware of all the permutations and combinations for searching for a name: not only for "william smith", but also "william * smith" (in case he has other names you are not aware of - you don't need an asterisk at the beginning because it will find it anyway) or "smith william" or "smith * william" (for alphabetical listings), and you need to put "OR" in between each search phrase. Fortunately there is a web site that will help you set up such a search - Free Genealogy Search Help for Google.
4. Most surnames can be spelt different ways - Hougham has 21 variations. Read "What is Soundex?" for different ways of searching for variations on some sites. (TNG's search options for this site uses both Soundex and Metaphone - select "Search" from the Find drop-down menu and click on the button beside Last Name and note that you can choose Soundex or Metaphone in your search on this site.)
5. When looking at records transcribed from originally hand-written documents, be aware of possible errors. I once found "Rogers" for what should have been "Royes".
6. And of course be aware of people having different surnames: women using their husbands' surnames; children adopting a step-father's surname; changes by deed-poll because a person did not like their name!