Google Alerts Employing Clickthrough Tracking

I haven't seen this discussed in the forums I frequent so I'm not sure
how long it's been going on. I receive several different Google Alerts
and the majority of them list out, in the email, direct links to the
page they are publicizing.

Today, however, I received an alert whose link was to a redirect app at
Google! The url contained several cryptic numeric parameters, along with
a parameter spelling out the alert's keyword search and of course the
destination URL (how else would a redirect work but to know the
destination).

Could Google Alerts be learning about site relevancy in this way? If
that's the case, does it apply back to regular search results? Surely
there must be an article somewhere...