Apple Mail Search Never Works

I was just reading an archived question about this that spans from very recent to years back, and personally I have NEVER seen the work properly, and now it barely works at all. It's not limited just to the built in mail client either.. I've just had to learn to live with being unable to search my email, and I've really had it. It is getting to the point where I'm going to have to switch to Gmail, but that still leaves 20 years of messages I won't be able to include in searches, and I absolutely loathe Gmail in every way. Why is this so hard to fix?