Obnoxious Referrer Links

There seems to be a trend these days that whenever you link to some external site, you do so via a redirect script on your own site so that you can track who’s following the link and steal some google-juice in case anyone happens to blog about something you pointed them to. I’m not quite sure why, but I just find this obnoxious – maybe it’s because I’ve been frustrated a couple of times when the referrer script was down, thus breaking the link – even though the actual site was up. Maybe it’s because I resent the couple of extra seconds it takes to follow the link due to having to make two separate HTTP requests. Either way, is it really gaining you anything to put your users through this?

I find it most amusing that Planet HCI actually uses this technique – despite the fact that it makes for a lessened user experience. I just hope that Google is smart enough to pick up these fake links for the spam that they are and doesn’t increase a site’s page rank because of them.