Google penalty for links opening in new tab?

[jhamlin]

Our web services provided suggested that Google doesn't like in-text links that open the link in a new tab.

Can anyone verify this?

We often link to outside credible resources for our audience, though it seems smarter to open in a new tab rather than risk that the person will not navigate back to our site after finding us.

Thank you in advance!

[AlanBleiweiss]

Unless someone else here knows of a specific case study, since I've never once heard of such a penalty, I'm going to rely on the SEO best practices model which dictates that user experience is the primary focus.

Since it can confuse users to send them off-site within the same browser if they don't intend to actually leave (just wanting to check something else out while still wanting to read your content after), best practices always dictate that you open another site in a new window.  Never open your OWN site in another window, only 3rd party sites...

[firstconversion]

Personally I like to have links open in the same tab, I will open them in a separate tab if I want them there.

But like Alan, Ive never heard of it being an issue one way or the other

[donford]

I have to echo Alan.

A long time ago when "pop-ups" were becoming a major problem forcing people into endless pop-up loops (still happens today) but browser have got much smarter and have some native functionality that can be toggled to prevent the worst case scenarios... back then I used to believe that all links should open in the parent, today I absolutely "hate" when a link to an external site opens up in the same window. I even hate google doing it to me when I click on results. I understand why, but its annoying and I always "right-click" open in new tab them.

So from a users experience perspective myself being the user, I would expect same site links to be in the parent window and external links to be a new window / tab. The exception being showing a PDF or some other sort of document on the same site, I would also think that should be opened in a new tab / window.

And finally I have also never heard of any penalty associated with the way a window opens.

[DesignbysoapLtd]

I seriously doubt links opening in a new tab would affect your rankings or cause any kind of Google penalty. Not something I think you need to worry about : )