According to an article in The Atlantic floating around the internet, 90% of users don’t know how to use CTRL+F or Command+F to search a webpage. We were surprised at that percentage. Fortunately, Mozilla has TestPilot studies with open data, and we can see if Firefox users behave similarly. One relevant 7-day TestPilot study of about 69,000 Windows users focused on Firefox’s user interface. Along with seeing how users interacted with the navigation bar, their bookmarks, etc., the study looked at how often people used keyboard shortcuts.
What we found is that about 81% of TestPilot users didn’t use CTRL+F during the course of the study. While 81% is lower than the 90% in the article, TestPilot users are usually more technologically experienced than the general population, since they are largely Firefox Beta users. When we look at TestPilot users who consider themselves beginners, the percentage goes up to 85%. Therefore, our 81% figure does not belie the Atlantic piece.
In addition, those who use CTRL+F on average use keyboard shortcuts twice as much as those who don’t, even when we ignore those people who don’t use any keyboard shortcuts at all. This implies that people who use CTRL+F are more comfortable with keyboard shortcuts in general. The only keyboard shortcut the users who use CTRL+F lag behind in is Full Screen, or F11.