Pages Find and highlight words or phrases

Pages Find/Replace will paint temporary yellow or gray backgrounds on matching text as found indicators, not as text highlights.

There is the industry norm for highlighting which is to place color behind text, and there is the quizzical use of the word Highlight by the Pages product team to mean select text with a yellow color and make it a tracking comment when clicked upon. Only Pages is confused about this terminology.

If you want the industry standard yellow (or color choice) highlight that is not a tracking comment, then that is achieved from the Text Background item on the More Text Options panel:

Pages does not support automatically highlighting all found results during a search. However, when you enter the text you want to search for and perform the search, Pages will temporarily highlight all found results. Once the search function is closed, the highlights will disappear.

Therefore, you may need to manually highlight the search results one by one after performing the search. The shortcut for highlighting is Shift + Command + H. Using this shortcut frequently might help improve your efficiency.

The Find facility will place yellow or gray (temporary) coloration on the found items only to show what it has found. Quit the Find facility and all of those found indicators vanish.

Unlike MS Word, Pages cannot apply a style to found content as a replacement, and you would have to selectively apply those real text backgrounds to each item. That will be arduous.