How to create a search page for search results

Hi everyone. I have been searching and reading how to create a search page to display search results using the Google Custome Search. What I have not seen described anywhere is the options you select when creating that new page.

If you are creating a search page and selecting a search page template within your theme, you are still promted to select: Draft, Public or Private.

If you select Public it shows up on your navigation bar on your site. I don’t want that…I want it to be invisible until someone does a search.

I have tried draft, public and private and none of them seems to be doing what I expect it to do. I would welcome any helpful information on what I am doing wrong since I have spent the last two days trying to find the answer through researching, trial and error before I came here to post.

For now I have made the results open up to a new google window and that seems to be working. However, I would like to make the results open up within my site and not open a new page.

Has anyone out there been in my shoes and figured this out?

Thanks for your time.