search functionality is not working in my magento, when I debug I found that result.phtml file is not being displayed on result page.
I updated every file related to catalog search and everything about all the file related to this is fine but still this file (result.phtml) is not displayed on result page.
Is there any way to solve this?
May be some 3rd extensions override layout handle for catalog_search_result. You should debug by enable template path hint.
http://www.excellencemagentoblog.com/magento-template-path-hints-magento
and check layout file: catalogsearch.xml
Perhaps you should revert the original catalogsearch.xml file that came along with magento.
Go into your theme's layout folder and run this server command:
grep -rl "catalogsearch_result_index" .
Check the files that come up and see what blocks ARE being assigned to your search results page. Often when you install a 3rd party extension, it installs its own .xml file that might be overriding search.
If you don't find the answer in your theme's layout file, check /default/default/layout and /base/default/layout as well.
And if that doesn't work, go into /app/etc/modules and disable each 3rd party module one-by-one by going in and setting 'true' to 'false', refreshing cache, and checking your site. You should be able to figure out what's overriding it by process of elimination.