Mouseovers to hide referral code - Yes or No?

[nottslad]

I noticed a lot of webmasters hide the referral code in their affiliate links so that it just shows the name of the site and omits the referral ID from the destination url displayed.

What are peoples thoughts on this? Good idea or bad?

My own thoughts are if you have a lot of referral links on the page using this method will bloat your code which may be detrimental to search engine positions. I'm not sure how many surfers pay attention to the detination url anyway.

Has anyone conducted any tests on performance of one over the other?