Is there an option/shortcut in Safari 6 to focus the search results after a search?

Let me make a clarification.

The problem is real, and we got it with the unique URL bar behaviour in Safari 6.

If you make a google search from the URL bar, Safari doesn't bring the focus to the document, but (for some reason, e.g. assuming you continue with typing new search keywords) leaves the focus in the URL bar. This causes that you can't instantly use the very advanced keyboard handling of Google's search results pages - which is: from the input field TAB gives you a selector arrow and you can navigate with keyboard arrows.

For using the search result page's keyboard handling, you have to bring the focus to the document. Now, whether it's easy or not depends on your keyboard settings in System Preferences. If the setting which says "Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:" is set to "Text boxes and lists only", then it's easy to bring the focus to the document by hitting Tab only once. But if it's set to "All controls" (which actually happens a lot if you're accustomted to using the keyboard in UI navigation), then Safari brings you through all the bookmark bar items and such buttons when you hit Tab. This is definitely a no-way.

You always need to switch back to "Text box only" (by hitting Ctrl-F7). The problem is that in this mode you can't navigate between form elements like checkboxes and buttons.

In Chrome the problem doesn't exist, because Chrome always brings the focus to the document when doing a search.

Apple should definitely address this issue.

Until then, a workaround can be that you hit Ctrl-F (moves focus to in-page search), then hit Tab 4x.

In Safari 12 (and possibly earlier versions), pressing the Escape key after the page has finished loading will focus the web page content, letting you use any keyboard shortcuts that the web site has defined (such as the J and K keys in a search results page in Duck Duck Go).

If you press the escape key before the page has finished loading, it will simply stop the page from loading. Fortunately, search results pages from the major search engines load quite fast so it’s not too much cognitive load to wait.

Sadly, Google have removed custom keyboard shortcuts from their search results page. You can use the Tab key to move between page elements, but you must tab through UI elements like the search input box before getting to the results.

This keyboard shortcut is not listed in the Help section inside Safari, or in the keyboard shortcuts help page on Apple’s support site.

I haven't been able to replicate the exact Chrome behaviour, but I adapted this extension for Safari, and maybe it'll help if you're used to keyboard shortcuts. What it does:

• After searching, remove focus from the search field
• Navigate results using j (down), k (up) and / (search field focus)

The extension and source can be found here.