How to search a webpage for a specific word in mobile Safari

One of the great, and yet little known, features in mobile Safari is that it allows you to search a webpage for a specific word. This feature is a lifesaver if you happen to come across a lengthy article, for example, and want to quickly skip ahead to a particular segment of the document.

Here's how it all works.

Let's say I hop on over to ESPN.com to check out the latest sports news. Here I see ESPN's splash page talking about the Red Sox playoff win.

But let's say I need my football fix and want to quickly jump to any articles discussing Peyton Manning without having to scroll through the site's entire front page.

So, to find any references to "Manning," I simply double tap the URL bar in mobile Safari, which brings me to this page.

Next, I start typing my search query, in this case "Manning," into the Safari search bar. All I see next are listings of Google Search suggestions.

But wait! There's more here than meets the eye.

Scroll down and you'll soon see a section titled "On This Page" lurking below.

The "On This Page" match indicates that there is one instance of the "Manning" string on the ESPN homepage. I give it a tap and I'm instantly whisked back to the area of the ESPN homepage where "Manning" appears. And to make things easier to find, it's conveniently highlighted in yellow.

Pretty great, right?

Now let's say I look for a phrase that appears multiple times across a document. For instance, upon typing "Brady" into the URL bar and subsequently scrolling down, I see that there are five matches on the webpage.

I tap "Find 'Brady'" and am now taken to the first instance of "Brady" appearing on the webpage. To find other instances of "Brady," all I have to do is tap the rightward facing arrow located at the bottom of the display and I can quickly cycle through all mentions of the search string.

All in all, this is a great search tool to keep handy when browsing through mobile websites where search functionality exists, but is somewhat buried underneath the surface.