You should definitely leave the page the way it was after applying the DataAssist Search server behavior, like you noted you will just get all of the results if the Search server behavior is not applied to the recordset.
It looks like your search criteria is setup with all 'AND's and the separators, this means that you will have a very restrictive search, it will only return results when all of the search terms match for one or more record.
I think you should start with your Search server behavior criteria, you should try to remove all but one and test it out. When you get positive results with that then you can move onto the next criteria until it is built up the way that you would like it.
