I read a post on ProBlogger.net a while back that debated whether or not to have hyperlinks open in new windows. Up until that point I always set my links to open in new windows. A point was made in the article that we should let the visitor decide how they want to handle the hyperlink and set the link to open in the same window by default. If the visitor wanted to open the link in a new window, they could. At the time, this sounded rational but now I realize it isn’t.
Your goal should be to keep visitors on your site for as long as possible. In order to do this, you can’t take a chance that the visitor may not know how to handle the hyperlinks. All you have to do is set the link to open in a new window. Open links in new windows. Set the target to blank. Set the target=”_blank”. Do it.