Your query string should contain the location for Maps onebox to appear (provided someone has listed a business for that location).

There are times when it takes upto 1-2 days for the database to update before the listing starts to show. You might be seeing it as you would be logged in with the same id with which listing was done.

The listing has been up for quite some time, it's just that when the client searched the company name, the Google Maps OneBox didn't show up on his computer and it show up for everyone he asked to do the same search.

I'm thinking this is just a random thing that Google does. Because it shows up for me, but not for some other people...could it be an IP thing?

There are quite a number of reasons why two people on two different computers may see different Google Search Results.

Google personalizes search results so you'll see sites that you visit more frequently higher in the results (typically). You could also have set Google to display only certain types of sites, or set SafeSearch to filter out some types of adult-oriented results.

To attempt to see a more average/common version of search results, you can try logging out of Google and deleting your browser cookies.

However, there are still other reasons why you can see different search results, even after that:

- Google displays business results based on the geolocation of user's IP address. So, two people in geographically separate locations who type in "pizza" to search may get back a few different local businesses which sell pizza.

- Google has many, many servers to handle all the requests they get, and it takes a while to distribute updates as webpages are added, deleted or change contents. So, there's probably rarely ever a time when a couple of their servers are displaying identical content, although for many searches the results are pretty consistent. Two people viewing Google results separately may be served results from two different Google servers.

- Finally, Google does sometimes deliver up different content as a transitory test, checking to see if rank or layout should be adjusted for better usability. This is pretty rare, and it does not sound like what you're experiencing in this case.