Spotlight's Privacy tab not backed up by Time Machine? I just did a full restore from Time Machine and noticed that my Spotlight Privacy tab was empty. Am I correct in assuming that this information is not backed up by Time Machine? I believe it's stored in /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Exclusions.plist, and therefore it shouldn't be backed up because Time Machine doesn't back up a lot of the hidden files, especially in the root directory (/.fseventd being the example that comes to mind).

So is it true that it isn't backed up? And why isn't it stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist then?
Default Time Machine exclusions are in the file /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

In 10.7.5 this file has a section named:
PathsExcluded
Which contains:
/.Spotlight-V100

So it is very likely that /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Exclusions.plist will not be backed up by Time Machine.

I don't know where the "Spotlight Privacy tab" preferences are stored.