Comment 8 for bug 1164016

I also find the removal of type-ahead very frustrating. I think an option to re-enable it should be available.

In my opinion the previous behavior was more intuitive: if I wanted to search fo something I would have used the search function at hand. Before it was possible to discern the two things, (1) go to the file/folder in the current folder, (2) search for a file/folder in the current folders and subfolders. Now only option (2) is possible.

As a workaround, I followed the following suggestion and installed Nemo:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/285793/how-do-i-disable-recursive-search-in-nautilus-3-6