Contents

1. Introduction
2. Search a Web Page with Google Chrome
3. Google Chrome Advanced Search
4. Search a Web Page with Microsoft Edge
5. Search a Web Page on Mac with Safari
6. Search a Web Page with Mozilla Firefox
7. Search a Web Page with Vivaldi on Linux
8. Search a Web Page on an Android Phone or Tablet with Google Chrome
9. Search a Web Page on iPhone and iPad Devices with Safari
10. Search in All Open Tabs in a Browser
11. Search a Web Page Using Regular Expressions
12. Search an Entire Website Online
13. Search an Entire Website Offline
14. Search a Web Page for Links
15. Conclusion

 

 

1. Introduction

 

This is a complete guide to searching for words on a web page in 2023.

 

If you want to know how to:

• Search any web page on a desktop computer using Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or other browsers.
• Search a web page on an Android, iPhone, or iPad device.
• Search for words on all open tabs in a browser.
• Search an entire website online or offline.

 

Then you will learn everything you need from this guide.

 

If you want to search for text in files on your computer, see the article How to Search Files in Windows.

 

 

2. Search a Web Page with Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a free web browser created by Google developers in 2008. For the next 14 years, it gained tremendous popularity and is currently the most-used browser in the world. According to Stat Counter, in 2022, Chrome is used by more than 67% of desktop browser users, followed by Microsoft Edge (11%), Safari (9%), and Firefox (7%).

 

To find a specific keyword on a single webpage on Chrome:
 

1. Press Ctrl+F for Windows or ⌘+F for Mac to open the search field, which will appear in the upper right corner.

 

2. Type your search terms in the search field.

 

 

 

3. Navigate through the highlighted results using the arrows to the right.

 

 

 

The browser highlights the matching words as you type, and the scrollbar marking appears.

 

 

 

The scrollbar marking is a helpful feature of Chrome and many other browsers - it shows two thin lines on the scrollbar wherever a word is found so that you can quickly scroll to the corresponding section of the page.

 

Along with its useful capabilities for searching a web page, the Google Chrome browser also has some disadvantages:

• There are no additional search settings like "Match Case" and "Whole Words."
• There is no built-in Advanced Search option.
• It cannot search in all open tabs.

 

 

3. Google Chrome Advanced Search

 

Although Chrome does not have a built-in Advanced Search, many good extensions exist for this purpose. They offer advanced methods for searching such as:

• Searching for multiple words.
• Case sensitivity.
• Regular expressions.

 

An excellent example is the Multi Search & Multi Jump extension. Unlike the Find option, it allows you to search for multiple keywords and easily navigate through the search results for each of them.

 

To search for multiple words with this extension, follow the steps below:

 

1. Add the extension to Chrome.

 

 

 

2. Press Ctrl+Shift+F (⌘+Shift+F for Mac) to open the extension.

 

 

 

3. Click on the "multi" option to separate each word.

 

 

 

4. Click on the "?" button to show the menu, and choose a "multiword separator" - the character you like to use to divide the keywords, in my example "+."

 

 

 

5. Type your keywords and press "Enter" ("Return" for Mac).

 

 

 

In our instance, if you search for "marketing strategy," you will find nothing. However, if you search for "marketing + strategy," you will find all the keywords.

 

You can navigate through the found words using the F1-F12 keys. For example, with the F1 key you navigate to the first keyword match, with the F2 key to the second keyword match, and so on.

 

If you want to search with more options and specifics, you can also use regular expressions with this extension.

 

Let's take a look at the pros and cons of this extension.

 

Pros

• Allows you to search for multiple words and phrases.
• Case-sensitive or insensitive search is possible.
• Includes the search history in the combo box.
• Supports Regular expressions search.

 

Cons

• Does not have a "Whole words" option.
• No scrollbar marking.
• Cannot filter sentences containing all searched words.

 

 

4. Search a Web Page with Microsoft Edge

 

Microsoft Edge is the successor to the previously popular Internet Explorer browser. Edge is a cross-platform browser created by Microsoft in 2015 and supports all modern versions of Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. In terms of popularity, Edge is second in the world after Google Chrome.

 

Basically, the search function in Edge is not different from that of Google Chrome.

 

An exciting and valuable addition to the search capabilities of Edge is the ability to easily search an entire site using Bing.

 

To search an entire website with Microsoft Edge, do the following:
 

1. Click on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of the browser.

 

 

 

2. Click on "This site."

 

 

 

3. Type your searched words and press "Enter."

 

 

 

 

You will see the search results from the currently opened website provided by Bing.

 

Later in this article, you can read more about searching an entire website online or offline.

 

 

5. Search a Web Page on Mac with Safari

 

Safari is the primary desktop web browser on the Mac. It is an integral part of the operating system, which is one of the reasons why it is the most popular among Apple users.

 

Searching a web page with Safari is similar to other browsers and is pretty straightforward:
 

1. Open the webpage that you want to search in.
 
2. Press ⌘+F to open the search bar.
 
3. From the options box, choose "Contains" if you want to have matches in the middle of words, or leave the default option "Begins with" to search only words beginning with your search term.

 

 

 

4. Type your searched keywords and press "Return."

 

 

 

5. Navigate through the results with the arrow buttons to the right of the Search field.

 

 

 

 

Pros

• Additional option for searching in the middle of the words.

 

Cons

• No scrollbar marking.
• No "Match Case" and "Whole Words" options.
• Lack of Advanced search.

 

In addition, if you need to search for text on your computer, take advantage of our helpful article on how to search on Mac.

 

 

6. Search a Web Page with Mozilla Firefox

 

Mozilla Firefox is the fourth most popular desktop web browser in the world. Created in 2002, it is one of the oldest free browsers.

 

To search a web page with Firefox:
 

1. Press Ctrl+F (Windows) or ⌘+F (Mac) to open the search bar. It will appear at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

2. Type the search terms. All the matches will be highlighted in purple with the currently selected one in green.

 

 

 

Firefox offers some helpful search options placed to the right of the search bar:

• "Highlight all" - highlights all matches.
• "Match Case" - searches with case sensitivity.
• "Match Diacritics" - distinguishes accented letters. For example, with this option enabled, if you search for "rГ©sumГ©," it will not find "resume," whereas it otherwise would consider this a match.
• Search whole words only.

 

 

7. Search a Web Page with Vivaldi on Linux

 

Vivaldi is one of the most recently developed cross-platform browsers, created in 2015 by the Norwegian company Vivaldi Technologies. According to some sources, Vivaldi is now the most popular browser for Linux users.

 

Searching a web page with Vivaldi is quite similar to doing so on Google Chrome:
 
1. Press Ctrl+F for Windows or ⌘+F for Mac to open the search field.
 
2. Type the searched words in the search field.
 
3. Navigate through the highlighted results using the arrows or keyboard shortcuts - F3 to move to the next result or Shift+F3 to move to the previous result.

 

 

 

In addition, you have an option for case-sensitive searches.

 

Pros

• "Match case" option.
• Scrollbar marking.

 

Cons

• There is no "Whole Words" setting.
• No Advanced Search option.

 

 

8. Search a Web Page on an Android Phone or Tablet with Google Chrome

 

Android is the most popular operating system for mobile phones and tablets, which according to Statista, is used by 72% of all users. It was developed in 2007 by Google developers and is based on the Linux operating system.

 

When it comes to browsers used on Android, by far the most popular is Google Chrome, used by over 90% of Android users.

 

You can search for text on a web page using Chrome on Android by following these steps:
 
1. Click on the three dots menu on the top right of the browser.

 

 

 

2. From the drop-down menu choose "Find in page."

 

 

 

3. Type your search term.

 

 

 

4. Navigate through the results using the arrows next to the search field. Each result will be highlighted, and you can see each result marked on the scrollbar to the right.

 

Pros

• Highlights all matches.
• Convenient scrollbar marking for navigation in the search results.

 

Cons

• The search function is not readily available (multiple clicks are needed).
• Advanced search is only possible if you use some extension.
• No additional search options.

 

 

9. Search a Web Page on iPhone and iPad Devices with Safari

 

The iOS operating system was developed in 2007 by Apple and is used on iPhone, iPad, and other devices. The most used browser on iOS is the mobile Safari browser.

 

Searching a web page with Safari on iOS devices is almost the same as searching on Android with Chrome:
 
1. Click on the Share button. Depending on the screen width, it is situated either to the right of the address field or at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

2. From the drop-down menu choose "Find on page."

 

 

 

3. Type your search terms.

 

 

 

4. Navigate through the results with the arrows.

 

 

 

5. Click on "Done" to hide the search bar.

 

Pros

• Highlights all matches.

 

Cons

• No scrollbar marking.
• No Advanced search.
• Lack of additional search options.

 

 

10. Search in All Open Tabs in a Browser

 

Sometimes you may need to search for a word among many open tabs. Unfortunately, this is not possible with most popular browsers except Opera Browser, which has a built-in function for this purpose.

 

To search all open tabs in Opera, follow these steps:
 
1. Click on the search button at the upper right corner of the tabs pane.

 

 

 

2. Type your search word - you will see a list with the open tabs containing the searched word and the approximate number of matches in each.

 

 

 

3. Click on the desired tab from the list, press Ctrl+F (Windows) or ⌘+F (Mac), and type your search word again to find all matches on the page.

 

 

 

To search in all open tabs in Google Chrome, you should install an extension like Search all Tabs. It is a brilliant tool that indexes the contents of the pages in all open tabs in the browser and can give you results ordered by relevance.

 

To search in all open tabs in Chrome with the Search all Tabs extension, you should do the following:
 
1. Add the extension to Chrome.

 

 

 

2. Press the extension icon to open the search field.

 

 

 

3. Type your search words.

 

 

 

4. Click on the desired search result to open the corresponding tab.

 

 

11. Search a Web Page Using Regular Expressions

 

The regular expressions use special characters that allow you to perform a search precisely. For example, the "." (dot) symbol matches any character - if you search for "x.z," the results will match xyz, xaz, x1z, and so on.

 

The Find option in Chrome and in the other popular browsers does not support regular expressions search, but we can do it using extensions like Multi Search & Multi Jump, mentioned above, or the Chrome DevTools.

 

Chrome DevTools is a set of web development instruments built into the browser. With them, you can inspect the source code of the website. Also, you can search through it, as it contains all the webpage's text. This search supports regular expressions.

 

To search the web page with regular expressions using the Chrome DevTools, follow these steps:
 
1. Open the web page you want to search, and click F12 to open the DevTools.

 

 

 

2. Click Ctrl+Shift+F (⌘+Shift+F for Mac) to open the Search menu.

 

 

 

3. Click on the ".*" button to enable regular expressions search.

 

 

 

4. Type your regular expression in the "Search" field, and press "Enter."

 

 

 

The drawback of this searching method is that it searches not only in the web page text but in the whole HTML source code, which sometimes makes it challenging to find the desired text.

 

 

12. Search an Entire Website Online

 

If you need to search for words not only on a specific web page but on an entire website, you should use a search engine like Google or Bing.

 

To search for words on a website with Google, do the following:
 
1. In the Google search field, type "site:" followed by the website's domain. For example, to search in Wikipedia, type "site:wikipedia.org."
 
2. Add a space and type your search terms, for example - "site:wikipedia.org investment management," and press "Enter" ("Return" for Mac).

 

 

 

You can follow the same steps for Bing.

 

 

13. Search an Entire Website Offline

 

Suppose you use texts from a website very often. In that case, the most convenient option is to download the entire website to your computer and search it through a desktop search program.

 

The easiest way to download a website to your computer is to use a free desktop program like HTTrack.

 

To download a website with HTTrack, follow these steps:
 
1. Download and install HTTrack on your computer.

 

 

 

2. Open the program and click the "Next" button to create a new project.

 

 

 

3. Give a name to the project.

 

 

 

4. Choose the directory where the website will be downloaded and click "Next."

 

 

 

5. Add the website address (URL) and click "Next."

 

 

 

6. Click "Finish" to start the download.

 

 

 

When the download finishes, open the folder with the project name and double-click on the "index.html" file to open the offline version of the site in your favorite browser.

 

If you want to search in the text of the downloaded site, the best option is to convert the site's pages from .html to Microsoft Word (.docx) files. You can do this very quickly with the help of the freeware utility MultiDoc Converter.

 

Steps to convert files from HTML to Word:
 
1. Download and install MultiDoc Converter.
 
2. Open the program and choose the Source location. It should be the folder named with the domain of the downloaded site.

 

 

 

3. Click on the "Html" tab on the left pane.

 

 

 

4. From the "Convert to" drop-down list, choose "MS Word (*.docx)."

 

 

 

5. Choose the Target location where your Word files will reside.

 

 

 

6. Click on the "Convert" button to start the conversion.

 

 

 

Once you have the Word files, you can conveniently search them with a desktop search program. My favorite tool for this purpose is SeekFast - it is a brilliant and easy-to-use program, able to search all documents on your computer.

 

To use SeekFast to search the Word documents that you created from the downloaded site, do the following:
 
1. Download and install SeekFast.
 
2. Open the tool, click the "Browse…" button, and choose the folder where your Word files reside.

 

 

 

3. Type your search terms in the search field and press "Enter" ("Return" for Mac).

 

 

 

4. From the results list, click on the file name (representing the page title from the website) to open the Word document with the page's text. You can also click on the text to open the text of the page in the program.

 

 

 

For other valuable tips about searching in Word documents, check out our article How to Search Text in Multiple Word Files.

 

Searching an entire website offline, according to the procedure described above, has many advantages to searching online, as well as some disadvantages, of course.

 

Pros

• Offline search is much easier and more convenient with the help of desktop search programs.
• You can more easily copy, edit, and use text from Word documents than from web pages.
• The search covers all pages of the site, while when searching online, some pages can be missed if they are not indexed by the search engines.

 

Cons

• You need to do additional steps, such as downloading the site and converting the pages into Word documents.
• If the texts on the site change frequently, you may have some outdated texts.

 

 

14. Search a Web Page for Links

 

Sometimes you may need to search a web page for links. You may also want to know what type the given link is: internal (to another page of the same site), external dofollow (a regular link to an external site), or external nofollow (a special type of link that is not considered by the search engines). If you search manually, it will take a long time for a page with many links, so the easiest way to check the links is with a suitable extension.

 

If you are using Google Chrome, I recommend the LinkParser extension. It distinguishes nine link types and marks them in different colors. This is very helpful for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes.

 

Here is how to use the extension:
 
1. Add LinkParser to Chrome.
 
2. Click on the extension icon and choose "Click here to show links."

 

 

 

3. Scroll down on the page to see the links: the internal links will be colored with white background, external dofollow links with green background, and external nofollow links with purple background.

 

 

 

15. Conclusion

 

In this article, I have covered as thoroughly as possible all aspects and options of searching a web page for words, as well as searching an entire website. If you find it useful, you can easily share it on social media using the buttons to the right so others can benefit from it too.

 

If you have any questions or notes, do not hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn or leave a comment in the section below!