The problem is the search ranking. It often ranks file names with partial matches higher than file names with full exact matches, and this frustrates me endlessly. For example I have a folder called "Home" containing documents like receipts for home improvement projects, manuals for appliances, mortgage statements from banks, etc. Searching for "Home" preferentially brings up random other files that has "home" in their names but this folder is ranked low. I have not found any way to adjust Spotlight's ranking heuristic.

Yeah, I have similar problems all the time and its heuristic is really strange. Like, it’ll emphasize a file called ._home_env_vars.sh buried in an old Python environment that hasn’t been accessed in 8 years over one just called “home” that I search for and open three times a week.

The other big thing that’s frustrating is it’s never clear to me when it’s done searching and when it still has more results to find.