Help! My Spotlight isn't working

https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/mdutil.1.html#:~:text=DESCRIPTION,metadata%20stores%20for%20mounted%20volumes.

The -E option

-E This flag will cause each local store for the volumes indicated to be erased. The stores will be rebuilt if appropriate.

There are other mdutil options to disable Spotlight searching (such as -d). I hope you did not type that by accident.

It is possible your Mac is somehow misconfigured. However here is a more brute force method but be careful with the rm command (and the others) as if the correct spaces are not entered exactly, it may delete other things. Do a backup first. You can copy/paste from below

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /

In order, these accomplish:

1. turn indexing off
2. delete Spotlight folder
3. turn indexing on
4. rebuild

These items have been posted many times in these Discussions. I took this from

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254967412?sortBy=oldest_first&page=2

but these commands appear in many other posts.

P.S. Do you have any third party security tools, cleaning apps, anti-virus, VPN and the like installed or running?

Is this your personal computer or is it managed by someone else (an employer)?

Do you have any anti-virus, security, network monitoring, cleaning, VPN apps installed or running?

This command might help but now I doubt it because your system seems to have firmly disabled Spotlight.

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Can you download and run Etrecheck which may help others here diagnose? Post the report here using the additional text button below.

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

I have never seen this before, I have used these commands myself, but not frequently because I don't encounter Spotlight problems much, and can't find much online from other users with a similar problem except from maybe 10 years ago posts, for example this:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/146508/spotlight-indexing-and-searching-disabled-message-in-terminal-on-osx-why

But I hesitate to suggest what is in there because it is from so long ago.

When you followed this Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support did you put your entire internal drive into the "privacy" area (which tells the Mac NOT to index or search it)? Then reboot the Mac. Then go back to Settings and REMOVE the entire drive from the "privacy" area (which tells it to index it anew and enable searching)?

If nothing is still working, I would next try what I suggested with Etrecheck. It won't change anything on your Mac but provides a convenient summary of your configuration and what is installed (no personal info is revealed, you can check that your self before posting the report) which may reveal some culprit to others who are more expert than me who are reading here.

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

Please download and run Etrecheck.  The free version is sufficient. Be sure to give it Full Disk Access.

Copy the report as shown in this animated screenshot

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

It’s certainly abnormal behavior. But no one can tell what is going on because you have not provided any info about your setup, configuration, or what is installed. Hence the suggestion to run Etrecheck and post its report here. Which you have not done. Not sure I can help but there are many experts reading here who could step in and help you resolve this with the detailed content of that report.

You can also try this command in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -E /

Make sure you wait long enough (it can take ~ hours) for the indexing to complete.