First, open the schema file for the links list feature. In my case, it was located at:
C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12TEMPLATEFEATURESLinksListLinksschema.xml
In this file there should be two instances of the following:
<Column Name="URL" HTMLEncode="TRUE" /><HTML><![CDATA[">]]></HTML>
Replace them both with this:
<Column Name="URL" HTMLEncode="TRUE" /><HTML><![CDATA[" target="_blank">]]></HTML>
Links