Can modern tails stop following and search back up the buffer? That's why I use less +F, personally.

less allows you to stop and resume easily, without losing any of the output of your command (useful if you are watching the output of a process as well). Also less doesn't clutter the scrollback of your terminal with output from tail.

With less, you can do:

less myfile.log &ERROR # filter out any line that doesn't match the regexp ERROR F # capital f enters follow mode

Now you're tailing a log with a custom grep, which is retroactive on history as well.

Wide lines like from syslog, frequently you want one event per line and not to have wrapping occur. The -S switch to less is a boon here.

My only guess would be that you can search inside less if your terminal emulator doesn't support it.