Could target="_blank" be hurting sales?

Popup blockers could be preventing people the page opening up to order

[tictoc]

Most of my links to my outside affiliate products all have target="_blank" making the click thru links open up in a new window. I am wondering with the new pop-up blockers on google, yahoo, alexa, msn, and other toolbars if this hurts sales because people are too lazy to click the ctrl enter key or whatever to go to the link.

Anyone noticed better leads or sales if you do not use the target=blank?

[Jenstar]

Some of the older freebie pop-up blockers don't allow _blank links, but Google, along with many of the other ones out there do allow them to open without any problems.

If you are opening up the links into an odd-sized window or using some types of javascript to open the link into a new window, then you may run into problems.

But the standard "_blank" shouldn't cause any problems with the most common currently used pop-up blockers.

[tictoc]

I noticed Alexa blocks it but I am not sure if they are even that popular compared to Google and Yahoo toolbars.

[Vampyre]

I've definitely noticed better sales without target="_blank". On one of my sites I was getting no sales at all. I removed target="_blank" from the links, and started getting sales almost immediately.

[Catalyst]

There are many pop blockers on the market that block links that open in a new window. There is a site that has done evaluations of most of the blockers and shows how many block new windows. I foudn it with a Goole search. If you watch carefully even the Google toolbar does this intermittently. Not sure if it's a glitch or if they are testing, but many people have noticed it although it only happens for a few hours at a time a couple times a week.