Yahoo recently announced it is acquiring Tumblr, bringing shareable custom content and new users to its site.

The divide between search and social is closing. Yahoo recently reported it’s acquiring social sharing site Tumblr for approximately $1.1 billion, in what appears to be an attempt to steal search market share back from Google. A press release announcing the partnership bullishly estimates Yahoo’s audience will grow 50 percent, thanks to its collaboration with Tumblr that closes in the second half of 2013. If projections are true that Yahoo will pass the billion monthly visitor mark, marketers may need to adjust their SEO content to cater to the search engine’s algorithms.

Last week, Brafton reported on the latest search engine ranking figures from comScore. In April 2013, Google accounted for 66.5 percent of the search market, leaving Bing with 17.3 percent and Yahoo with 12 percent.

press release announcing the partnership bullishly estimates Yahoo’s audience will grow 50 percent.

Yahoo’s strategic alignment with Tumblr would provide a much-needed surge in user traffic to reclaim queries from Google – especially with speculation Yahoo may separate itself from Microsoft in search. Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing social media sites with 120,000 signups every day, adding to its 300 million monthly unique visitors. However, the deal isn’t necessarily one-sided. In exchange for bringing its popular platform to the table, Tumblr gets access to the search site’s infrastructure and personalization technology.

“We’re elated to have the support of Yahoo and [its] team who share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from,” said David Karp, CEO of Tumblr.

While Yahoo’s acquisition of social sharing site Tumblr is the latest evidence of the narrowing gap, it’s certainly not the only one. Last week, Brafton reported Bing is now displaying social media content from Facebook in SERPs, and the search engine previously aligned with Pinterest to make images easily shareable.

As the Google’s competitors develop winning combinations to fragment the search market, brands must pay attention to developments and adjust their internet marketing strategies if they want top spots in SERPs that drive traffic back to their websites.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.