URL syntax - is this valid?

.. seeing this for the first time.

[austtr]

A link swap proposal came in today and the links page has a URL of:

[widget.net...]

Browsers can handle it OK but what about search bots? Would they be able to spider it? The site is not in Google's index but that could be due to the site probably being brand new.

Is this simply a case of someone with an odd approach to folder naming or is something else involved.

Just curious.

[larryhatch]

If that's a COMMA I see between option and com, I'd have some concerns.
I've never seen a URL quite like that. -Larry

[austtr]

yes, they are commas.

[Hester]

Commas are fine - I've seen them before in links.

[victor]

Comma is a reserved character, and so should always be escaped when used in an anchor tag.

[faqs.org...]

But many things that read URLs can handle unescaped commas -- just as they often do with unescaped ampersands in anchor tags.

[j4mes]

I've seen commas about quite a bit, so I guess they generally work.

However, i note that neither eBay, Amazon or the BBC sites use commas, which in my book means check it carefully, since these guys invest *lots* into usability, etc.