Spotlight won't index Applications after a rebuild

[sclough]

I've read several threads on this, but I cannot find any solution. I tried doing a delete and rebuild of the Spotlight index because it was recommended to do every now and then to improve performance. Ever since then, Spotlight won't index applications. I have Applications checked, I've even unchecked it, restarted and then rechecked it. I've rebuilt the Spotlight index three times and they don't show up. If I use Finder to edit Spotlight comments on an Application, all of a sudden it will show up, but not unless I do that. So, it seems like Spotlight ignores Applications until I do something that triggers Spotlight to see a comment and then all of a sudden the application appears in Spotlight.

All the solutions I have seen online are to check the privacy settings (I have nothing marked private) and to rebuild the index. Neither solution has worked. Does anything have any ideas what is causing most applications to not be picked up by Spotlight unless I add a comment and then erase it updating Spotlight?

 

[mulo]

sudo mdutil volumename -Ev

flushes your volume index for the specified volume. rebuild should start immediately

sudo mdutil -Eav

flushes index of all volumes. rebuild should start immediately

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/mdutil.1.html

 

[sclough]

I tried that again though I've rebuilt the index 3 times now. Applications still don't show up in Spotlight results...

 

[sclough]

I found the solution courtesy of this thread: http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10235431

You need to tell Spotlight manually to import the /Applications folder. Why, I don't know, but it fixes the problem. On SL, you run:

arch -i386 mdimport /Applications

Otherwise you can run:

mdimport /Applications