Legitimate Link Exchange

[dpoincelot]

Hi all, when going about exchanging links with someone is this format legitimate, it seemed suspicous to me:

<a class="link" href="blah blah" onMouseOver="window.status='this is my site link'; return true" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true" target="_blank">

So they href their own site and put my link in the onmouseout, seems weird to me. Is this o.k.?

Any insight appreciated.
Thanks, Dan

[ncreegan]

If the href is not to your site, it's not a link to your site, just made to look like one.

If it's to something like "out.ext?out=example.com" it's going to a script that is (most likely) sending hits to your site. Some people don't mind this, others do... sometimes SE's mark it as an inbound link, sometimes not.

A trick I use to see the true href of something that appears to be a link is to right click on the link and look in the status bar. 99% of the time, doing so will reveal the true destination.

[dpoincelot]

I tried the right click and it revealed the destination site was not mine, but the hosting site. Guess I'll avoid exchanging links with sites like this.
Thanks!