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I didn't really know what to name this question, and I have no idea what's causing this either.

Usually when you do a google search a little arrow shows up to the left of the first result, so all you need is to press Enter and you go straight to the first result. Lately though, that hasn't been working for me. After I do the google search, the arrow only shows up if I press TAB first and that usually messes up everything (since TAB means "select next link" in most browsers).

EDIT: OK, it seems this is a feature. The problem is: this feature doesn't work at all in Firefox. When I hit tab, the blue arrow does show up but Firefox also selects the first link he finds on the page (usually the "+1" button). This way, if I hit Enter, instead of entering the page, I just mark the entry as +1.

So the instructions provided in Google's help page ("TAB, then ENTER") don't really work.

Is there anyway around this?

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Hitting down-right also works. Not really easier though. – Pubby Oct 12 '11 at 18:09
@Pubby8: Nope, that doesn't work either. For some reason the blue arrow doesn't show up at ALL until I hit TAB. – Bruce Connor Oct 12 '11 at 20:11
Down-right doesn't move the cursor, but it does bring up a "I'm feeling lucky" option. At least for me. – Pubby Oct 13 '11 at 21:44
@Pubby8 I see what you mean now. That's a good suggestion. Unfortunately I'm usually searching directly from the urlbar. You gave me an idea though, I'll just change the urlbar to use the "feeling lucky" option. :-) – Bruce Connor Oct 14 '11 at 0:18
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Google changed the behaviour recently, so this isn't an issue with your setup.

It says you need to hit tab to get the blue arrow here.

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In that case, Is there anyway to prevent tab from focusing some link? Usually, when I hit tab, the blue arrow does show up but Firefox also selects the first link he finds on the page (usually the "+1" button). This way, if I hit Enter, instead of entering the page, I just mark the entry as +1. – Bruce Connor Oct 13 '11 at 0:05
Oh yeah, it like firefox and Google are conflicting witht the behaviour - Google takes the first tab to activate the keyboard controls which moves focus to the first url, but ff then reacts to the tab and moves the focus to the second url - which can be the +1 or even the second entry in the list. Pressing up/down puts it back in the right place, but I don't think there is a way you can fix this. Beyond using Chrome, which doesn't do this. – Paul Oct 13 '11 at 0:40
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