I noticed when running a Xenu link test that I have boatloads of 302 redirects on affiliate links. These links were not for products that have been discontinued, some were for banners I had just placed. Do all of these redirects hurt the site's PR like a non-reciprocal link? Would I be better to take them off?
302 redirects are normal for affiliate links and are used so the affiliate program owner can send the traffic through a gateway which gathers information about the traffic using that channel. This method also usually prevents the need for keeping referral information in the URL while the surfer is shopping, making things look a bit more normal to the surfer. 302 redirects are the appropriate mechanism here as apposed to 301 so that the search engines do not index the resulting page but instead index the referring page.
Thank you for that information. Does anyone know how badly 302 redirects damage a sites page rank? Is it a matter off the fewer the better?