Would adding noindex help?

[spes123]

I had completely forgotten that I have about 20 pages of content on my site that is an exact duplicate of other sites (i.e. obtained from PLR site). I really do not want to delete these pages as they do get a lot of visitors (or did before last algo updates). These visitors are not from organic search but have navigated to the pages from within my site.

Question is should I

a) add noindex to these pages and then ask google to remove them from index or

b) try to rewrite them

Many Thanks

Simon

[spes123]

Thank you all for your advice and fast responses.  It looks like I had a few late nights and some sore fingers coming up.

[intSchools]

Definitely try rewriting the content (this will also keep it fresh and up to date). If it is good, valuable content then it would be a shame for you to have to remove it from search engines as they could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your site.

[Matt-Williamson]

I agree with goodlegaladvice if you have time to rewrite the content this would be the best scenario as you are likely to pick up search visitors.

If you don't have the time you could consider cross domain canonicalization crediting the original clearly to the search engines - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday

[goodlegaladvice]

Try to rewrite them if its content that is attracting people on your site it may attract people from the search engines too....  Should be worth the effort