My directory currently provides direct links to external sites within the same window. For business reasons, I am contemplating the idea of modifying the way we link to the external sites. Instead of the direct link, I am thinking about spawning a popup window which would be a framed page. The top part of the framed popup would be our site that would have a "back to results" link. This link, if clicked would close the pop-up window and return the user to our site. The bottom part of the framed popup window would be the linked site. (In summary, it would be almost identical to the way that AskJeeves links to sites in their search results.
My question is: will switching from the direct linking structure to the framed popup window affect my SEO efforts on my site? Will this help me because I am not giving out "PR points" (or whatever you want to call it).... Will it hurt me because the spidering search engines (google) won't be able index the direct links to the external sites?
