How can I search for document content, specific words, in my scanned (and searchable) pdf files?

When using spotloght to search my files for text within a scanned document, I may or may not find documents that were scanned by a scan program (ScanSnap) to a searchable PDF file on a firewire attached drive.
Is there a specific manner that yeilds useable results 100% of the time?

Spotlight should index PDF files (as well as Word and some other kinds of files) but it seems that PDFs are not created equal. I've seen and heard complaints that some scanner/OCR programs are saving files that aren't searchable and yours is one of them. Try opening one of the files in Preview and resaving it.

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