The search mambots

The search mambots are fired up when a search is performed using the Joomla search module.

Joomla comes with several search mambots included:

• Search Content
• Search Weblinks
• Search Contacts
• Search Categories
• Search Sections
• Search Newsfeeds

When users perform a search, Joomla "asks" each of the published mambots for search results.(it runs the mambot  .php file and parses the results)

So, if you unpublish all search mambots, website search will never return anything. To enable only searching  through contacts, publish the Search Contacts mambot.