i submitted my site map which was approved and i am now listed on google with the sitemap - and in my awstats i can see the googlemaps bot visited me twice as soon as I submitted my site map. but that was 2 weeks ago and it hasnt been back since, i would have thought it would be visiting my site like googlebot does everyday to check for updated? can anyone advise on this, or does googlebot just do it?
You have not resubmitted the Sitemap to Google so Google hasn't come back. Google is looking for pages that have been changed since they last visited (indexed) your site. You haven't told them that something has changed. Resubmit the Sitemap to Google via Google Webmaster Tools. This is the best way and you will see whats really going on with Google and your site. Also, you can ping google by using this url http ://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml.gz