Is Yahoo’s slight gain in search share last month meaningful? Whether Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) can again become a contender remains an open question, says AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, who at any rate is gratified that the struggling company is finally doing something positive in the search arena. Yahoo has rolled out some new features that suggest it is taking search more seriously.

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Increasing its paid search share could at least help the company achieve greater balance, as performance-based ads are trending upward, while online branding campaigns—a focus for Yahoo—are heading the other direction. Yahoo hopes new features such as the inclusion of more pictures and video will push its share even higher, but Kara questions this approach. While the idea of giving search more display-like qualities—and in turn, trying to give graphical ads a more performance-type ROI flavor—seems fine, it won’t necessarily stop investors’ pleas to sell search to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). That said, if Yahoo can build a respectable business out of search again, it might make the company more appealing to advertisers, and in turn, to investors and to Microsoft.