Google says it has since fixed the "technical error," and if you searched Google Maps for Sunrise on Wednesday, you would find a healthy grid of streets, malls and parks on the far outskirts of Fort Lauderdale, where it's supposed to be.
But this week's fix didn't come until after public outcry.
Sunrise's mayor, Mike Ryan, said this is the third time Google has dropped his city off the digital map, which he says is unacceptable.
"I don't have any problem with the idea that mistakes happen," he said. "The algorithms they have to apply to understand what my search is are undoubtedly complicated. What disturbed us is that this wasn't the first time it happened."
When he heard of the most recent drop, he was in disbelief.
"I said 'holy cow,'" he said. "It felt like a bizarre novel -- that all of a sudden we disappeared. We woke up one morning and we didn't exist in the ether world."
Sunrise isn't the first city that Google Maps has misplaced. The blog Search Engine Land documented five cities -- La Jolla, California; Rogers, Minnesota; Wickliffe, Ohio; Woodstock, Virginia, and Imperial Beach, California -- that Google Maps has also lost and found.
The Mountain View, California, company did not respond to CNN's questions about those previous outages, nor did it provide details about the Sunrise case.
The company did say it had fixed the problem and that it strives to deliver "the richest, most up-to-date maps possible."
"We've built our map from a combination of authoritative sources, ranging from the U.S. Census Bureau to commercial data providers, and have used satellite, aerial and Street View imagery to help complete the map," the company said in an e-mail to CNN. "Overall, this provides a very comprehensive map of the U.S., but we recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies that could arise from any of those sources."
