First of all, I realize you are busy and I don't want you to waste too much time on this. Please reply only if you really want to.
Unfortunately, it appears that my default_results.php override is radically different from yours.
So I ended up using your code snippet from the forum and using the default Joomla default_results.php from com_search instead of the override in my template and that worked out better. It's more similar to your example.
At the same time, I am not getting any images in the results and in playing with the code I realized that none of the variable in your code here:
<?php if($result->path) { ?>
<span class="search_img">
<img <?php $link=JURI::root().'media/com_hikashop/upload/'.$result->path; ?>
title="<?php echo $result->filedesc; ?>"
src="<?php echo $link ?>"
alt="<?php echo $result->filename; ?>"
width="150" />
</span>
<?php } ?>
Have a value. Mainly I think I am missing $result->path because it looks like it sets the rest of the variable in the image.
I have tried to echo each of those variable individually but all I get are blanks.
1) Could be that I am supposed to turn something on in the search plugin that will provide a value for the images from the DB?
2) Is it possible that in your override there is some code that already establishes those variables (and missing that, I get empty fields?)
3) or it could be I am just a moron, in which case eventually I'll figure it out.
Again, feel free to leave it at this if it's too much work for you. Eventually I'll figure it out. I feel I am really close.