Search for a value in a column of a 2d array and return its first level key

$total = [
    1 => ['title' => 'Jake', 'date' => 'date'],
    2 => ['title' => 'John', 'date' => 'date'],
    3 => ['title' => 'Julia', 'date' => 'date']
];

How to search the title values and return the numeric keys of the qualifying row?

If we search for Julia it should give 3.

Ok sorry for my previous answer, didn't notice it was nested array. You may try this instead:

function recursiveArraySearch($haystack, $needle, $index = null)
{
    $aIt   = new RecursiveArrayIterator($haystack);
    $it    = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($aIt);

    while($it->valid())
    {
        if (((isset($index) AND ($it->key() == $index)) OR (!isset($index))) AND ($it->current() == $needle)) {
            return $aIt->key();
        }

        $it->next();
    }

    return false;
}

$array = array(3 => array('title' => 'Julia'));

$key = recursiveArraySearch($array, 'Julia');
echo $key;

Result:

3