How can I make spotlight ignore certain file types and directories? Since spotlight continuously updates the index, sometime the file precedence gets changed around and I might type in "saf" and press return expecting to get Safari, but instead spotlight attempts to open some Java jar file.  

Question Is there any way to make spotlight ignore certain file types or directories?
There is a way to exclude folders: add a .no_index extension to the file or folder name.

But my favourite one is adding a .metadata_never_index file to a folder. Use the following command:

$ cd DIRECTORY
$ touch .metadata_never_index