Google has had keyboard navigation for search engine results pages for quite some time, but a new feature makes it even easier to use.

Over the last few days I’ve noticed an arrow appearing in google.com search results (I’m yet to see it on google.com.au).

The arrow is a cursor of sorts – by using the up and down arrows on your keyboard you can select a listing and then view the page by hitting the enter button.

Something I didn’t know is that Google has had keyboard navigation for a while, part of an experimental system that worked like this (and still does), but you need to use a special URL to try it out:

Key Action
J Selects the next result.
K Selects the previous result.
O Opens the selected result.
Opens the selected result.
/ Puts the cursor in the search box.
Removes the cursor from the search box.

Example search : http://www.google.com/search?q=google&esrch=BetaShortcuts

The new keyboard navigation feature doesn’t require you to use the extra parameter and the last 3 commands of experimental search still work in the Google.com results (along with the up/down arrow); being:

Opens the selected result.
/ Puts the cursor in the search box.
Removes the cursor from the search box.

So, if your mouse suddenly dies during a search, it’s Google to the rescue and for some people, perhaps the keyboard navigation may be a better option anyway.