Why is it that sometimes when I do a search on Google, the results page comes up with this ANNOYING arrow whereby when you use the down arrow key things just one one listing and the page doesn’t scroll.
I hate that!!!
What ends up happening is I scroll down using the vertical scroll bar, and then when I use the down arrow key things hop back up to the top of the page.
Not sure if that makes sense, but I want to get rid of it always!!!
Does your browser support “caret browsing”?
Then try press F7. It’s the usual shortcut and you might just happend to activate it.
If not I have no idea, I seldom use Google. 
On your MacBook, you have to hold down the Fn key (bottom left) to make the arrows scroll a web page.
But why don’t have to do that on 90% of the web pages I visit, yet on some I get that weird jerky behavior from the arrow thing?
I’m not sure. I’ve just switched back to a laptop after 5 years on a desktop, so I’m re-learning all these quirks myself. 
I just tried it and it is a bit of a bother indeed.
It seems the down arrow acts as a tab for navigation. And since the page position isn’t “registered” with the “tab index order” it starts back at the first.
I usually use the mouse, so I don’t know when browsers changed the down arrow to mean tab rather than scroll but maybe there’s a browser setting that could revert the behavior instead of the browser dictating ours?
That’s sounds like “caret browsing” on a non Mac, not “anon-Mac”, when all four arrows navigate to links on the page.
Yes, I’m on Windows.
And yes, I just did some Searching and the solution seems to be to turn off caret browsing, though that didn’t seem to make any difference to me when done through options or f7
Not for the faint of heart but going into about:config and right-click toggling
accessibility.browsewithcaret_shortcut.enabled;true
to false did the trick
Now to figure out how to do that in Chrome! 
I, embarrassingly, was trying to reproduce this for you, and was bewildered when I couldn’t get Chrome settings/flags to show up. Turns out…I’m on FF… 
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Caret isn’t supported natively in Chrome. You’d need an extension.
Weird, as I can reproduce the problem in Chrome…
Just going off this page - http://en.kioskea.net/faq/40033-google-chrome-how-to-enable-caret-browsing
Bummer, I don’t have that installed… I may have to see if installing it and turning it off undoes the behavior on Google Search, but that seems sort of silly… doesn’t it?
If not silly, certainly completely counter-intuitive
Here is what I have in FireFox…
As I recall, I have randomly had this problem in both FireFox and Chrome for the last year.
I don’t know what it happens when it does.
Yes, but Firefox hides most settings in the “about:config” page, if the key even is present. In Chrome and also in Chromium, you have access to hidden settings by chrome urls. Full list at “chrome://chrome-urls”. (Firefox lists about-pages in “about:about”)
At “chrome://accessibility” you can have individual sites get the accessibility flag set. But in my experience, caret browsing in Chrome doesn’t use arrow keys for navigation, only the tab key. So I have no idea what’s going on with your Google searches.
I’m getting the annoying arrow thing in Chrome right now when I did a Google search for someone I know.
How do I stop Chrome from switching tot his mode? 
And did you go to chrome://accessibility as Erik_J just mentioned?
My Chrome wasn’t having the problem but when I clicked it to “on” I did.
I installed it and clicked to turn it off and no luck.
Then I went into the extension manager and turned it off, and I think that fixed things.