Google’s Maps Guide Tom, who first announced the problem (late Feb) with missing records in Maps and the subsequent fix (late April) has noted a work around for any records still not showing up in Map’s as a result of the problem:

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TOPIC: Active listing not appearing? Try this!
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Date: Mon, May 5 2008 3:52 pm
From: Maps Guide Tom

Hi All,

I know that there are reports that some listings aren’t appearing on
Google Maps, even though they have an “active” status and have been
verified with a PIN.

If you’re still experiencing this problem, I have a workaround that
may help get your listing to appear!

First, search for your listing to ensure it’s really not appearing:
1. Go to maps.google.com and click “Find businesses” under the search box.
2. Enter the name of your business as it appears in your Local Business Center Account in the “What” field, and then the city/state combination or zip/postal code in the “Where” field.
3. Hit “Search Businesses”.

If your listing appears, rejoice! Your listing is showing on Google
Maps. If your listing doesn’t appear in the search results, please try
the following:

1. Log in to your Local Business Center account at www.google.com/local/add
2. Click “Edit” next to the listing that isn’t appearing.
3. Without changing any business information, click “Finish”. You
won’t need to re-verify your listing.
4. Wait 24 hours, and then check to see if your business listing is
appearing using the steps above.

This should cause some business listings that aren’t showing to finally appear.

For the successful creation of business listings, please, please remember these two points:

1. This workaround should only be for listings that aren’t appearing but HAVE ALREADY BEEN VERIFIED and whose status is “Active” in the Local Business Center. Please don’t try this if you haven’t yet verified your listing.

2. Don’t include non-address information in either the “Address Line 1” or “Address Line 2” of your listing. Including such information will create a problem with the listing and Google Maps’ algorithm won’t be able to place it, even if it appears as a correct location
within your account.

Hopefully, this should clear up most issues about business listings disappearing. If you’ve performed the workaround and your listing still isn’t appearing, please let us know.

Best,
Maps Guide Tom

Maps Guide Tom’s advice to first find your record seems self evident but it is not uncommon for posters in the Maps For Business Groups to not really be sure if their record is in the Map’s index or not. This reflects both a user education issue AND an interface problem on Google’s part. A simple solution in the LBC would be to instead of noting that the record is “Active” offer a choice to actually “View” the record in the index so users of the LBC would be confident that it is actually there. It would obviate the need for the record holders to know how to query maps and it would reduce the frequency of one of the most common questions in the support Group.

It is intriguing to me that it is still necessary for a user to need to individually enter their LBC record and flag it so that Google knows to reindex it. Reminds me of the days of dBase/Foxbase and having to spend the better part of a day reindexing when a computer crashed before you could get back to business. Hmmm, the more things change…