In more recent versions of nautilus they've removed the 'type-ahead search' option for a slower less intuitive search. Ubuntu maintains a patch that restores this (http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nautilus/nautilus_3.14.2-0ubuntu2.debian.tar.xz patches/interactive_search.patch) Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 392464 [details, diff] nautilus-3.14.2-interactive_search.patch Just the patch from the download.
Patch for 3.18 https://gist.github.com/darthoctopus/9580eb8d68328a607d47 (source: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nautilus-typeahead/)
http://i.imgur.com/pBQf7hC.png (nautilus 3.18.2) from https://github.com/thankjura/gentoo-gnome overlay