[petercooper]

We have a redirect so we can measure traffic in aggregate (we don't track who clicks what) to refine our content over time. But.. I don't believe we get set as the referrer the way we do it (30x redirects). I believe this is why Twitter's t.co redirector DOES use a true "dummy page" as then they get the referral. It's something that might be worth trying though..

[duck]

Ah, okay... that makes sense and is a great setup. Did you run into any issues with spam filters when you made that switch?

[petercooper]

Nope, it's what Mailchimp, etc., do. All the outgoing links just fly through their server on the same hostname. We do the same with our hostname.

I have evidence that Google follows these links though, because if you link to a "bad" site even through a redirector, Google notices and will throw you into spam or say you're phishing, etc :-)