There's lots of ways to handle this but doing a fuzzy search for similar or possibly related part numbers should be easy enough. The user can then be presented

There's lots of ways to handle this but doing a fuzzy search for similar or possibly related part numbers should be easy enough. The user can then be presented with those search results. If the model/part number isn't found you could even provide them the option of adding content for that part if the site takes user generated content. I don't think I've seen any site take this approach but instead go with the spammy show a ton of ads approach instead. Fuzzy logic searches would be awesome. The problem here, of course, is that the site doesn't own the search program. They can only influence it in certain predefined ways. So if you're building a site for dishwashers from the 1970s and you know that folks consistently misspell some brand name? You either provide a page for that misspelling that Google can crawl or those folks don't get content. Assuming you're doing a quality site, folks who can't spell need content as much as those who can. Yet if you provide a page based on a misspelling folks will yell "spammer!". It puts you in a bind. There's no answer everybody is going to be happy with. I think people can tell whether or not site owners are trying to help them out or just trying to trick them using Google. At least I hope so. I know as much as I hate ads, I'm happy if I never saw one again for the rest of my life. I have to be careful not to take that personal opinion and apply it to all site creators, however. There's nothing wrong with noticing that folks are looking for something, can't find it, and providing content in that area. In a lot of ways Google is a victim of their own success. The net was so new, the algorithm so cool, that it looked a lot like magic. People got used to the magic and forgot that it's just a computer program somewhere. I think we may expect too much.