iPhone "Find on page" fails with pages returned by Google search

[donfrench]

Here is my process:

I tap on a result from a Google search and the page opens.

I want to search the page for specific text so I tap on the three-vertical-dot icon on the the address bar. It shows me five options, one of which is Find..., which I tap.

A dialog box opens directly beneath the address bar and in the entry field it says "Find text on page", which I tap.

The keyboard opens and I type in the text I am searching for and hit Search.

No matter what text I search for, I always get a brief display of a black box with white text that says "No results found".

What is going on?

[Edit]
Apparently, this does not happen on every page found by Google Search. I will give the example from my search today.

Search for "Rex Parker Wednesday credit report" and choose the first result. This is a crossword puzzle blog titled "Rex Parker". Tap the three-vertical-dot icon and search for the first word in the blog, which is "Strawberry" (or pick any other word in the blog). It give the "No results found" message.

 

[C DM]

So this is with the Chrome browser app, right?

 

[donfrench]

No, it is with the Google Search app.

 

[C DM]

Perhaps an issue (or a bug) with the app in that case?

 

[donfrench]

Three things: 1) This is Google Search we are talking about, not some junior programmer's iPhone app. 2) It has been like this for as long as I have owned my iPhone (a year). 3) It doesn't happen on every web page.

I mention the first two because it seems unlikely that Google would release their flagship app with such a glaring bug in the first place. And if they did, it seems like they would have fixed it long ago. The third point makes me think that it is something obvious that I am just not seeing.

I usually figure stuff like this out myself, having done a lot of debugging and QA work in the past. But I am still at a loss to explain it. The only thing I can think of is maybe Google converts the text (in pages that act this way) to something other than easily scannable HTML text. But what - an image? Seems unlikely. But what else? There must be some smart people out there who know the answer or have a better guess than mine.

 

[C DM]

Three things: 1) This is Google Search we are talking about, not some junior programmer's iPhone app. 2) It has been like this for as long as I have owned my iPhone (a year). 3) It doesn't happen on every web page.

I mention the first two because it seems unlikely that Google would release their flagship app with such a glaring bug in the first place. And if they did, it seems like they would have fixed it long ago. The third point makes me think that it is something obvious that I am just not seeing.

I usually figure stuff like this out myself, having done a lot of debugging and QA work in the past. But I am still at a loss to explain it. The only thing I can think of is maybe Google converts the text (in pages that act this way) to something other than easily scannable HTML text. But what - an image? Seems unlikely. But what else? There must be some smart people out there who know the answer or have a better guess than mine.

Google apps, just like petty much any other app, from a large or a small company, can have bugs, including those that can be there for a long long time. It's not to say that it's what it is in this case for sure, but it seems like there's a decent chance of something like that.

 

[donfrench]

It seems pretty unlikely for such an important and frequently-used feature as Find Text On Page to fail without notice or repair, but of course it is possible. On the other hand I don't really know what percentage of pages exhibit this odd behavior, and if it is quite low I guess that could explain why Google has never addressed it. But what could it be about Rex Parker's blog that so seriously trips up Google? It is a mystery. I posted this question on Stack Overflow. Maybe someone there will have a clue.