SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - YouTube is a load of laughs. Finding something specific you want to watch is another matter.

For searching video on the Web, Blinkx.tv is emerging as the way consumers on a range of Web sites and media properties find what is available.

On Monday, Blinkx announced potentially one of its biggest deals to date, with Microsoft Corp., which has agreed to use Blinkx technology to power the video search on some parts of its MSN Internet sites and Live.com.

"We will be the single biggest video search engine on the Web," Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx co-founder and chief technology officer, said in an interview.

Blinkx already powers video search on sites ranging from AOL to ITN, Lycos and Times Online. It also indexes video from the likes of BCC, Fox, MTV, Sky News, Reuters and YouTube and makes and makes videos on those sites searchable on Blinkx or partner sites.

To date, the company has indexed more than six million hours of audio, video, and TV programming to make it searchable.

Instead of a cut of advertising revenue, Microsoft has agreed to pay Blinkx an outright licensing fee based on how much use visitors to Microsoft Web sites make of the Blinkx search system, Chandratillake said.

"It could mean from zero to millions of dollars," Chandratillake said of the potential value of the Microsoft deal to Blinkx. Last month, Blinkx also signed a deal to power the video search of broadband entertainment site Lycos.