"Paul" wrote

| If the file had metadata, the metadata about the EXE
| might get indexed. I don't know what fields of
| an EXE are in the index. Perhaps "company:" would work.
|

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms809762.aspx

Not exactly metadata the way that's usually thought of,
but PE files (portable executable: EXE, DLL, OCX) have
an extensive header and can contain a version info field,
usually near the end of the file.
The header is mainly pointers to offsets of sections in
the file. It gets very involved. But what you're thinking of
as metadata is called version info and is an optional
resource, found in the resource table. If you open most
Windows EXEs in a hex editor you can see the data by
finding the string VS_VERSION_INFO, typically near the
end of the file. It's what shows on the right-click -
Properties - Version tab.

| It might be signed EXE files that have metadata.

No relation. It's not required but most people writing
EXEs want to put in the version info, just as they
want their name on the jacket of a book they might
write. It's really commercial data rather than metadata.

But there's also other data that might be thought of as
metadata, such as import and export table that tells you
a file's dependencies.
Again, none of that has to be there, but it typically
is in a Windows EXE.

| There seem to be at least two kinds of EXEs in
| any case.
|
?