• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 15, 2012

BrightEdge announced funding Thursday from the venture capital arm of the largest microprocessor company. Intel's venture capital arm -- Intel Capital, along with supporting investment from existing investors Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures, infused $12.6 million in the search and social management company.

The series C funding will support expansion plans and BrightEdge's goal to double the company's headcount from 74 in 2012. With a focus on enterprise support, the road map puts offices in New York and London later this year.

BrightEdge's growth can be partly attributed to a focus on support for enterprise companies beginning in 2008, according to CEO and co-founder Jim Yu. The company began work on a cloud-based platform that showed how enterprises could grow their business and Web site traffic and revenue through organic search engine optimization. Since then, demand for BrightEdge S3 has been extensive, with more than 400% growth.

The company says it serves more than 2,000 brands worldwide. BrightEdge serves seven of the top 10 retailers and eight of the top 10 digital agencies, along with Microsoft, Facebook, VMWare, Symantec, Intuit and Citrix.

Building the company, Yu, a former Salesforce.com director and product manager, along with co-founder Lemuel Park, says he saw a need in the marketplace for one platform that could simplify and measure the ways online marketers connect with customers using organic search. They assembled a team with an expertise in search and enterprise software, similar to Salesforce.com.