Rewrite and log links with jQuery

I log and rewrite my outgoing links with jquery. I do this for a couple of reason:

1. I want to have valid XHTML, and not add target to my links in the markup.

2. I want Google to index my outbound links correctly and not have mysterious links like /link/out.php?url=http://www.yahoo.com.

3. I want the sites that i link to, to see the correct referrer in their logs.

4. I still want to log what links are popular exits from my page

How do I solve this?

1. Add a class to each external link I want to log. [Yahoo!](http://www.yahoo.com)

2. Attach a log and a rewrite behaviour to links with the class added above.

<code>
$(document).ready(function(){
  $("a.external-link").each(function(){
     //rewrite: open in new window
     this.target = "_blank";
     //log the click
     this.onclick = function(){
       //lets make some valid use of xmlhttp-capabilities
       $.get("/out.php?url=" + escape(this.href), function(s){});
     }
  });
}
);
</code>

1. Create the server-side controller for handling logging.

<code>
out.php

</code>

That should more or less do it.

1. We still have valid strict xhtml

2. The outbound links are unaltered in a Search Engine Optimization point of view

3. Referring links are correct for those sites that we do link to

4. We are able to log outbound links