MHes - 11:05 pm on Feb 6, 2007 (gmt 0)

You may end up losing links when they see the redirect.

The only problem with hard coded external links is the 'local rank' effect, which may mean that your recommendation devalues the relevancy of your own site to a search phrase. If you tell a user to go to #*$!.com for "widgets" then google may say "OK, we will rank #*$!.com higher and thanks for the heads up.... oh by the way, you obviously think your page is not right for "widgets" so we will dump you".

Any external 'link' on your page will dilute the pr being returned into your site via internal links, even if it goes directly or cannot be followed by a spider..... or that is what I have always believed.

>Do the major search engines know how to parse basic redirects to centralized scripts which count clicks and then pass the link as a parameter on to the external site?
I don't think so.

>Is this a stupid question in that direct or straight-forward redirects amount to the same thing?
As far as pr calculations are concerned I think they are the same. I think the general rule is that pr will only be passed on if it is via some kind of 301? but I'm not sure. However, I think that if you have 10 links, the pr will be split by 10 even if it can be passed on or not, resulting in your internal links getting less.