Thread:Cnoteboat/@comment-1724320-20150319233408/@comment-24877660-20150324225846

Hey! Thanks for the questions. I've actually thought about the Runescape question before considering both sites are frequently at or near the top of our monthly pageview rankings. Unfortunately I have yet to "solve" the question since I'm not very familiar with the differences between the two sites having never played the game.

Some questions I will need to investigate further but some of the other questions I can answer:

- As far as I'm aware, there is nothing you can do to "tell" Google which domain to choose and it's algorithm will tend to pick the page "that answers the query best according to the list of ranking factors on each page" or whichever site has the best SEO.

- It is likely that Google will penalize one site for duplicated content but I will need to invesgate how it would determine which one to penalize.

- This, to me, is the big question that your communities specific use case will require further investigation.

- Everything I've read about answer boxes (and your community being referred to in the answer box) can only mean good things. If Google is pulling content from your community to answer questions then your community is "winning" that query. Here are some interesting articles on that point: http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/6121/total-serp-domination-using-the-new-google-answer-box-technique/

http://moz.com/blog/more-google-answer-boxes-with-bonus-experiment

The important takeaway being that it can only be a good thing if Google pulls your content directly to answer a question *and* links the user to your site.

Hope this helps and I'll reach out again after I've investegated some of the other questions.

thanks!

Charlie