Hi Joe,

That’s a great question. There are many sites, particularly with wordpress, that load scripts, images, includes and a number of other files often using variables. The answer however is not a simple yes or no, but would depend on the content you’re loading.

Some ways you can determine this would be to take the url (with parameters), view it in your browser and ask:

– Is there content showing that you want indexed?
– Is the content unique, or is the parameter something that does not change the content? In which case you may have a cleaner url to index.

An example of where it might be loading something you wouldn’t want to block would be an iframe loading unique content. For your specific examples of h, w and src they’re likely something to do with height and width which won’t change the unique content but rather the layout. If you try the quick test above you’ll have a confident answer.

For most cases with theme files, functions, plugins, and the like they simply add functionality and blocking them from the index won’t affect your content. It’s important however to ensure that other content that you do want to be indexed does not use the same variable.

If you’re unsure it’s generally better to leave it to ‘let google decide’ and they’ll index any relevant unique content.

Hope that helps,

Kris