For external links on my webpage, should I use a redirector page or just link direct to the external URL?

Question

Hello, just wondering if I should be using a 'redirector' type page or link directly to the external pages on my site http://www.onedaysalefinder.co.nz/ - currently I use a redirector page to track what links are being clicked on (which simply takes an ID, looks up the URL in the database, and then does a Response.Redirect(URL);

From a SEO point of view, is this a good idea/bad idea? I understand it can add a few milliseconds extra to the external page load time whilst it looks up the actual URL, but am not too concerned about this. I also get the benefit of tracking the clicks accurately, but are the pros/cons of using a redirector vs the actual link? Am I worrying about something I don't need to?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could combine both approaches by supplying the full URL as a GET argument to the redirector page. This would allow you to track clicks, include the original URL text in your page, and also remove the need for database lookup.

Answer 2

This shouldn't influence your ranking. It's a common technique and used by many major sites...

Is there a special reason why you look up the URLs in a database? You could simply transfer the redirect url directly as post/get parameter:

http://www.onedaysalefinder.co.nz/redirect?p=http://www.foo.bar

To prevent any kind of abuse you should check if the user came from your site by checking the referrer.

It's also a good idea to prevent search engines from indexing your script. Do this by modifying your robots.txt