google search tab shortcut not working [closed]

Question

I often use the "tab" key to quickly browse google search results but recently it stopped working.

usually pressing tab after searching puts a tiny arrow next to the results. this way you can easily use your keyboard arrows to navigate to the one you want.

Answer 1

This thing was making me crazy lately. Cleaning up cookies as some suggest was not an option as I'm always logged in into my Gmail account. Indeed, I could have switched to Incognito mode to have keyboard shortcuts at my fingertips but for God's sake who would be content with such UX?

So I spent half an hour and finally found that Lou Kosak said in the Google product forums:

Just found a (the?) fix. Turns out tab + arrow keys + enter navigation of search results only works if Google Instant is turned on (see https://superuser.com/a/554324).

To summarize the superuser answer:

• go to google.com when logged in
• click Settings in the bottom right
• click "Search Settings"
• update your "Google Instant Predictions" setting to "Only when my computer is fast enough" or "Always show instant results".

Hope that helps!

Update 2017-07-31: Google has dropped Instant search. See: http://searchengineland.com/google-dropped-google-instant-search-279674. This means that this solution does not work anymore.

Answer 2

Update: since google dropped instant search, this won't work out of the box, but this chrome extention fixes it rather easily.

here's a more hacky way to do it (older solution).

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Since the problem persisted even on other computers (on the same google profile) i found a permanent solution:

google search settings (from any google search page top right - the gear icon) -> google instant predictions -> enable (only when my computer is fast enough).

apparently the two features are linked. i had found an article on it somewhere else, but couldn't find it to quote it here. if someone does, please append in comment.

Answer 3

I run into this periodically and clearing browsing data (Settings -> More Tools -> Clear browsing data) seems to fix it for me. It seems like I have to clear cookies in order to get it working again.