Are syndicated articles duplicate content?

I'm guessing they are, but does anyone know for sure?

[Craig_F]

I have the opportunity to add a good number of syndicated articles to my site.

Initially, I thought this would be a good idea, but am concerned the SEs will consider this duplicate content since they are likely on other sites too - what do you think?

I realize I could do "noindex", but was hoping to optimize the articles around their natural keywords, so I don't really want to do that.

Thanks,

-Craig

[agerhart]

Yes, they would be considered dupe content. You should write the articles yourself. Then you would be able to use the content to target keywords, and I would venture to say that you would have a better audience as it would all be fresh content instead of articles that are on 20 different sites.

[Craig_F]

Thanks. That is what I thought.

I will be writing many articles myself, but the syndicated articles were just going to be extras that I didn't want to write myself.

That's ok though because I can if I decide I need them.

[startup]

Graig,
If it is a large article break it up over 2 pages. For smaller ones I writes a side bar that so far has removed the problem of duplication.

[JamesR]

.txt pulled off the dupe on this search [google.com] yet on most searches they seem to ignore everything but the source.