As a geek, yes using, pasting the link instead of clicking on it may be a good idea. I'd imagine THR is now their #1 referral site behind any search engines out there from our doing. I never really thought of it.
Referrals are used fairly often and kept track of by even the most basic logging analyzer software out there. That's why you see people make non-clickable links to Democratic Underground threads and such.
Heck, even I track it for my own blog.