This is current accepted way to link to a specific lat lon (rather than search for the nearest object).
http://maps.google.com/maps?z=12&t=m&q=loc:38.9419+-78.3020
z
is the zoom level (1-20)t
is the map type ("m" map, "k" satellite, "h" hybrid, "p" terrain, "e" GoogleEarth)q
is the search query, if it is prefixed by loc:
then google assumes it is a lat lon separated by a+