Originally Posted by Orion

click the cache button to see the date that google last grabbed a look at your site / page.

I don't have too much trouble getting sites in google fairly quickly. Take a look at that article by Matt Cutts. The quickest way is to get some links from relevant sites that rank well in that category.

Also when it comes to the google sitemap, when you make some changes try adding an additional page to your site so that your site map changes, then redo and update your google sitemap. no clue if that's a good one, it's just something I've started doing in the last 6months when we add a page to a site we update the sitemap for that site too.