What impact will the use of a target="_blank" have?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Richard Hearne: What would your visitors appreciate?
  
  > Ideally open outbound link in new tab but that opens security issues.
  
  Not sure where you`re getting that from? Very easy to open new window/tab without creating any security risk.
  
  > Is rel="nofollow" enough to allow this securely and what impact will use of a target="_blank" have even with rel="nofollow" have on the SEO?
  
  rel="nofollow" is an attribute used by search engines like Google. It has no impact on security or your visitors.
  
  
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  Naun Suze Amable Lewis: Thank you for your response Richard Hearne. I am new to the subject but from what I was reading the outbound links opening in a new tab did create potential security issues to do with cross site hacking. I didn`t understand it all but perhaps you can if you read what is said. And as far as I understood it was saying that rel="nofollow" was something that would stop destination sites with malware getting back to the source site and potentially doing a number of sneaky things. Due to that most sites like wordpress automatically insert the rel="nofollow" if you incorporate target="_blank" in your coding - I understood as a way of preventing these security issues. And it did in fact automatically insert it for me when I tried the target="_blank".
  
  I was finding mixed information online as to whether Google and the likes penalise this or whether the addition of the rel="nofollow" mitigated this or not.
  
  Which is what I was looking for clarification on.
  
  
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  Naun Suze Amable Lewis: Unless those sites I was reading were all completely wrong or I completely misunderstood...
  
  Which might explain why I couldn`t find any information on its SEO impacts
  
  
• 
  Richard Hearne: That`s more or less all inaccurate
  
  
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  Naun Suze Amable Lewis: Hmm, that is very strange, confusing and unfortunate that multiple sites ranking highly in the google search say the same inaccurate thing.
  
  
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  Nick Dawes: I can’t weigh in on the SEO considerations, but Naun is correct— there are indeed security concerns regarding the use of target=“_blank”.
  
  
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  Richard Hearne: Which are not affected by rel="nofollow" and have nothing to do with SEO. Those security issues are addressed with rel="noopener".
  
  
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  Michael Martinez: "...don`t want to lose visitors from site."
  
  I guarantee you, every person who visits your site leaves it. You cannot keep them there forever.
  
  Don`t trap yourself into thinking you need to keep people on the site. You`ll create a terrible user experience.
  
  If you think the links are useful, add them to your content.
  
  If you think the sites you`re linking to might be terribly slow or loaded with advertising that could cause problems for your visitors` browsers, you can open the links in a new browser tab. But you should warn people in advance that the links open in new browser tabs.
  
  
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  Naun Suze Amable Lewis: Thank you Michael - of course we can`t entrap people there, but my thoughts were that if there was a pertinent link to an external site that is fine, but in opening it in a new tab, even if they got temporarily distracted by the new site, ours would still be open and they might then go back to it, rather than forgetting about it and continuing on in the same tab - a gentle reminder of where they came from!
  
  How would you suggest going about warning people about links in new browser tabs without interrupting the flow of the page they are on? I suppose there is a way of making a pop-up warning when they click the link that they can accept or cancel....
  
  
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  Michael Martinez: Naun Suze Amable Lewis There are all sorts of methods for warning people. I often just add in parentheses something like:
  
  (link opens in new browser tab)
  
  If I place many such links on the page, I may add a note near the top (usually just before the 1st link).
  
  I don`t know of any 1 standard preferred method. Just asking people to talk about opening links in new browser tabs invites endless arguing about what is standard, preferred, safe, etc.
  
  I know I hate Websites that link to content that freezes my browser.
  
  
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  Naun Suze Amable Lewis: Michael MartinezSo our website is for wildlife photography tours. That sort of text is not really in good flow with the rest of the content about the tours or other information but perhaps that is just me being fussy and visitors wouldn`t care either way.
  
  Just starting out but at the moment the outbound links I was looking to include was in the section about our guides and linking to the guides personal social media accounts....the site aims to be highly visual and aesthetic.
  
  Still, I will consider what the best approach is for us.
  
  Thank you again