Spotlight doesn't find some apps on Mac os sequoia 15.1

A week ago I updated my MacBook Air M1 to macOS 15.1. Mostly everything has been pretty solid so far except there's this bug lately with Spotlight search where it cannot find apps and programs I have downloaded from the internet or the App Store unless I have recently opened them. It can easily find pre-installed system apps like Preview and Mail though. Searching for files and folders seems to be the same.

For example, I have Firefox (from the web) and CotEditor (from the App Store) installed but searching for those won't show them in the top results like you would expect. Instead I get generic safari web search suggestions. I have to manually open them from the launchpad or the finder and then it will show them. And if I turn off the computer and the next day turn it on again it may 'forget' that these apps exist.

Even if I literally open the /Applications directory in the Finder and search for these apps it won't show them, even though they are right there!

Example of a failed attempt:

Example of expected behavior:

This is annoying because on Sonoma I didn't have that issue and could search and instantly open any app even if I rarely use it.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. (for the record, if it makes any difference, I do not have apple intelligence turned on. ) Thanks.