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Hi, Our understanding is that the first link found in the code will "count" as far as the passing of PageRank and the anchor text used. The other links on the page will likely be used to count towards the total links on the page, meaning that there could be some "dilution", but as alrockn says - this set-up is very common for e-commerce and should not mean that you are actively harming the distribution of PageRank throughout the site or to the individual product pages.

No, you should not have any issues with dilluting the source URL, and not pass link juice to the other pages. Here is a short list of ways I've used the span link. For links that only run JavaScript when they are clicked. They don't load a new page into the browser. The same thing can be done with href="javascript:..." within an A tag. With the span link, however, any JavaScript that affects the A tags on a page will not affect the span link. For links that only run JavaScript when a mouse hovers over it. They're not supposed to load a new page when the link is clicked. The span link in this case is so much more elegant. An A tag must have an href attribute and, if the link is used only for an onmouseover, the href must be constructed to do nothing when the link is clicked. Hide from spiders that another web page is being linked to. Perhaps you wish to link to another website for the convenience of your visitors. Yet, the other website is not in the same category as yours and you don't want certain search engines to think your site is similar to that other. Or, you simply don't want to provide link juice to the other site. Source: http://www.willmaster.com/library/web-development/linking-without-an-a-tag.php