Spotlight not finding applications

I recently had to erase my MacBook Air and reinstall everything (in order to take care of some pesky hard drive errors that could not be repaired without doing so). Since my reinstall, my laptop has been working as good as or better than before, with the exception of Spotlight, which can't seem to locate Applications that are installed on my machine.

I use Command+Space to launch virtually any application I use that's not in the dock. This has been an indispensable shortcut, one I make sure to tell all my friends who are new to Macs. Now, however, if I type in "Excel" or any shorter variation, my installed Microsoft Excel app can't be located by Spotlight and my top hit for that search is "Microsoft Excel" in the app store.

Thanks for anyone who can help me out. And yes, for the record I have reindexed spotlight and have rebooted my computer and yes "Applications" is checked in Spotlight options of System Preferences and it is the top entry. (This isn't user error.) And yes I'm aware Spotlight isn't intended to be an application launcher but that doesn't make my problem go away or change the fact that this bug exists.

Thanks all for your help.