Why must I constantly rebuild Spotlight index?

[warnergt]

I have a folder which holds many other folders for various topics. These contain articles that I need to reference.
When Spotlight is working, it is great. I can find relevant topics quickly -- infinitely faster than a Windows search.
However, these searches only work for months (perhaps weeks) before they don't work.
I can't find documents with a certain name even if I am looking directly at the document in the Finder.
Once I rebuild the Spotlight index, it all works again.

What is up with this? It is extremely annoying.
And this problem isn't just Monterey. This goes back for a pretty long time.

I'm using a Mac Pro 2019 with Monterey (v 12.4).

 

[warnergt]

I have a folder which holds many other folders for various topics. These contain articles that I need to reference.
When Spotlight is working, it is great. I can find relevant topics quickly -- infinitely faster than a Windows search.
However, these searches only work for months (perhaps weeks) before they don't work.
I can't find documents with a certain name even if I am looking directly at the document in the Finder.
Once I rebuild the Spotlight index, it all works again.

What is up with this? It is extremely annoying.
And this problem isn't just Monterey. This goes back for a pretty long time.

I'm using a Mac Pro 2019 with Monterey (v 12.4).

By the way, this problem is not specific to the folder I am talking about. It is a problem for the entire disk directory. I only noted this scenario as it is the point of greatest irritation to me.

 

[Fishrrman]

I found spotlight to be "extremely annoying" from the time Apple first introduced it.

So... my solution was to TURN OFF spotlight, forever.

And that's what I've done with every Mac I've owned, since.

No spotlight here, at all.

 

[Gregg2]

It's amazing that Apple has not made improvements to Spotlight after all these years. I rarely have the need to use it, but for those needing a good file search app, you'll have to go elsewhere.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I don't think I've ever seen a decent explanation of why the Spotlight indexes get weird.

I leave my Mac on overnight so that Carbon Copy Cloner can do its thing. I'm considering trying to add a launchd/Applescript process that would rebuild the Spotlight index, also.