Spotlight unpredictible

[RestUnknown]

Hi

I have some documents I open regularly via Spotlight. When I type the keywords to find them and open them, it usually shows the one I want as the first one so I just have to press enter. Today I wanted to open one again and used the SAME keywords as I always do, and now the one I want appeared as the 12th result. The first results were even totally irrelevant.

Spotlight has become terribly slow and annoying on El Capitan in comparison to previous versions of OS X. I even put internet searches etc off in the system settings for Spotlight but to no avail.

But as a question, can it be changed?

 

[Fishrrman]

My solution:
TURN OFF Spotlight, for good.

Instead, use a couple of small, free searching apps:
"EasyFind" and "Find Any File".

Works for me...

 

[Weaselboy]

Try reindexing Spotlight by running the command below in Terminal. That will often help. Give it 30 minutes or so to complete.

sudo mdutil -E /

 

[Ebenezum]

OP:

Reindexing Spotlight may help for a while but its likely the problem happens again later. Hopefully Apple someday fixes the bugs that cause the issues with Spotlight in El Capitan. Schedule is anybody's guess...