SHGoogle Inbox: Overriding incorrect Schema.org actions?
Has anyone had a problem with Google incorrectly converting an email into a Schema.org action? https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/hotel-reservation
Essentially, a client of ours has sent out an email with certain trigger words in their footer and Google incorrectly believes that it is a booking email and converted it into a hotel reservation card:
- 'Reference Number' (Google has converted this to Booking Number)
- '...bookings made between...' (Google converted this to the dates you are staying)
- 'Company Address' (This is the scariest....Google has found the nearest hotel to their company address which is a Marriot hotel and put that!!!)
https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/images/inbox_hotel.png
Unfortunately, because Google has been too clever for it's own good - it's giving customers the impression that they have made a booking at this Marriot hotel and the number of complaints both our client (and the Marriot!) are receiving is crazy.
Is there some code you can put into your emails to force Google not to attempt to do this?
Stephen, I have had success thwarting Google's "overly smart" code by placing one or more zero-width white space characters in the words/numbers that trigger Google parsing. The zero-width white space character () and word-joiner characters () are invisible (they have zero width) but by including them, trick Google into thinking the word/number is something different.
For example, if "Reference Number" is causing problems, code it as "Reference Number" -- your recipients will still see "Reference Number" just like you intend, but to Google it will see something it can't process automatically.
I use this when I want to disable Google's automatic phone number detection which I blogged about here: http://blog.inkceptional.com/prevent-gmail-ios-from-turning-phone-numbers-into-links/
Thanks Jeffrey - should have thought that the white space character fix would fix this one too. Thanks - will get the guys to give it a go tomorrow.