When I drag a Smart Folders out of Favorites, they seems to disappear, but are the search processes stopped as well?

I'm practicing creating Smart Folders and they appear in Favorites.

I understand they display the results of searches and are not real folders, but they still represent extra work the OS has to do, so if during my practice I create 100 "test" Smart Folders I will like to make sure that I can delete these searches when they are no longer needed.

Question: How to delete or remove the macOS Smart Folder searches when I no longer need them? I'm not just asking how to make them disappear, I'd like to be sure the underlying search process stops as well.

Right now I just grabbed one In Finder's Favorites and tried to drag it to the desktop but it seems to have disappeared, at least I can't find it. But is the underlying search also gone? Can do this many times and be sure that I'm not building up a long list of searches?

• https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/mac-help/mchlp2804/10.15/mac/10.15 explains how to create them, but not how to make them go away when they are no longer needed.
• https://tipandtech.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/delete-smart-folder-in-finder/ says command-drag them to delete them but it's 10 years old and doesn't feel sufficiently authoritative.

Solution 1:

By default, saved searches are saved in ~/Library/Saved Searches/, however, since they can be saved elsewhere, you can always search for files with a .savedSearch extension and delete them.