Site links to my site but the link is deceiving

strange links afoot

[ikkyu]

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this but I ran across a site that links to mine - but in a way that I not very comfortable with, maybe because its the first one I've come across.

Basically this site is set up like a directory, with some competitive keywords in a link followed by a long description about the site. So I came across my domain name sprinkled around many of these descriptions, but instead of the link pointing directly to my site, it's like:
[questionabledirectory.com...]
If you click on the link another window pops up and voila -there's my site. I can guess how they did this, thats not the question. My question is am I getting any benefit from this setup(I think not) and is this site benefitting from using our name but pointing the links back to their site?

[treeline]

If you are getting visitors you are benefitting.

There has been a lot of discussion here about '302 redirection problem' or '302 hijacking' which you may want to read about. How big a problem this is varies widely by who is speaking.

[ogletree]

Webmasterworld actualy links like that. They just do not want to pass PR to you. Now as far as if it hurts you I don't know. I have some sites doing the same to me. It almost looks like a directory script that you can buy or get for free so I don't know if the person doing it even knows what they are doing.

[larryhatch]

I think you can call this an instance of "PR hogging" as I call it.
It takes different forms like hogger.com/sites/site#1234, various php addresses etc.
A hogger won't give a straight <a href= (yoursite) link as passes PR from his site to yours.
The directory hopes that your content, or at least the link to it will help build
its position in the SERPs. They don't care if this fails to benefit your site.

The question now, is whether this still works like it used to,
i.e. whether G and Y follow thru and pass PR anyhow.
I still don't have a good answer for that, and opinions vary. -Larry

[treeline]

Lots of for-sale directory scripts do something like this so they can count outbound clicks and know which links are most popular, otherwise they may just be guessing. I think that many webmasters are oblivious to PR hogging or other sinister motives, they're just running the script and tracking results.

[ikkyu]

After looking at that site some more I tend to agree with treeline in that they do it to track popularity, although I believe it might be to hog its pr as larry says.

On a side note I just came across a site that copied my homepage verbatim and stuck it on the bottom of a "search results" page. Guess I got scraped - that was something before that I only read about.

Oh well, I guess it comes with gaining some visibility.

My SEO-BS meter is starting to develop;).

[larryhatch]

I agree there are legitimate reasons for these sorts of links.
It goes without saying that some PR hogs hide behind those reasons though.

I just wish there were some other way to track outbound hits that passed credit / PR properly.
Its really up to the engines to fix these sorts of things, and they remain mostly silent.

G and Y could prevent oceans of grief and hostility if they simply passed PR thru the phony links
to genuine content pages, PROVIDED they clearly indicated this for all concerned.

IF that ever happens, it would be interesting to see how many sites continue with
the mess and hassle of 'counting their outgoing hits' etc. . -Larry

-Larry