Question about duplicate content and common knowledge

[burgerman]

Let's say you create a site dedicated to a particular card game and you plan to include the game's rules, how to play etc.

Because these game's rules are common knowledge, there's a high chance of unintentionally duplicating similar information from some other site's "game rules". There are only so many ways to tell the same information when thousands of others are telling the same thing.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[draggar]

Yep. If the rest of your site and one or two pages are duplicate (like in rules) then it shouldn't affect the search engines much as long as the duplicate isn't a majority of the site.

[burgerman]

Thank you for the input draggar

[JohnNapoletano]

If one page/article is exactly the same as others, then that one page should not rank well, but the site as a whole shouldn't be penalized for it. Think about all the newspaper/rss sites that would be out of business if a site wide penalty was in place. On that one duplicate page, I'd suggest that you have a unique Intro and Conclusion paragraph...put in a unique picture or snapshot, change a few words where it makes sense (add in a side note like this too). Think "value add" do something a little different that helps the players but don't stress over it. Good luck!