site searches on Rootsweb

I tried to create a site specific search on google some years ago but the problem was the /tilde (and it still is - just been checking)

http://www.google.com/services/free.html

Enter the domain(s) to be searched
(google says)

There are approximately 18600 pages for wc.rootsweb.com

in our index.

There are approximately 362000 pages for rootsweb.com in our index.

There are approximately 208 pages for freepages.rootsweb.com in our index.

BUT
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hugh/

Please remove "/~hugh/" and re-enter just the domain genealogy.rootsweb.com*
* Google does not provide search over directories, just domains.
If you wish to provide search for a directory, please see our FAQ.

but many ISP s now present subdirectories as sub domains which would overcome this

or
http://www.google.com/services/custom.html but that costs money

http://www.google.com/faq_freewebsearch.html

so I use http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=81867074&pid=r&mode=ALL&query=
which only indexes part of this and my other sites

http://www.freefind.com/?tr=fi000

but was well worth doing to gain understanding of how a spider bot works
by setting it to work and reading its log