Web search engine brings TV clips to your fingertips: tv guide launches online tool to find popular television episodes.

PASADENA-based Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. launched its own search engine of popular TV clips last week.

"It's for the guy who Googles 'The Office' and gets, instead of the popular show, hundreds and thousands of results and a video clip on Terry Tate: The Office Linebacker," said Paul Greenberg, general manager of TV Guide Online.

The new site, at http://video.tvguide.com, offers a specialized search engine with an index of 110,000 searchable video clips. This includes shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Heroes," along with late night and reality shows and music videos.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The index is comprised of mostly recent shows, but also classics, such as full episodes of "Gilligan's Island." Unlike the clips found on YouTube.com, hardly any of the content is user-generated.

Greenberg said the company found that about 70 percent of searches for videos on major search engines were for professional content. But popular viral videos, such as Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone" video, have made the list.

This is thanks to TV Guide Online editors who roam social networking sites Facebook and MySpace to find out what's hot in online videos, said Greenberg.

"We're not the bull horn telling everyone what they should watch, but we've really got our finger on the pulse of what people are looking for," he said.

The site is the company's way of creating a formidable presence online, comparable to the one offline. Traffic on the online version of the TV magazine is ballooning, unlike the print publication, which has seen a steady decline in circulation in recent years.

In August, 4.9 million users visited TVGuide.com, up 70 percent from last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at [phone], ext. 230, or at [e-mail].