this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Google Hijacks Restaurants Booking System Leading To No Reservations Being Available. (www.seroundtable.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Imagine you own a restaurant and you get all your reservations online through your booking system; you even tell people to book online when they call, via an automated message. But then, all of a sudden, Google decides to hijack that booking link and replace it with Google Assistant's calling feature.

So instead of Google linking to the booking system you selected, let's say OpenTable booking integration. Now Google uses Google Assistant to try to call the restaurant and speak to a person. But no person will answer the call, the call goes to a message to tell people to book online. So the next thing that happens is that Google gives up calling, thinks there are no reservations available and tells those trying to book online that there are no reservations available.

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

Replaced in what context?

This was really confusing to me too from the context of the article. Here's what I'm guessing. At the top of the article it has this:

So even though the article doesn't say it, I'm guessing if a user were to search Google maps and find the restaurant, inside the details where was previously a link to "Book a reservation"...through Opentable. The article is saying that for this person's restaurant Google is no longer showing the Opentable link, and instead showing a Google link driving by the AI. Those screenshots being what the user would see if they try to put in a reservation.

The logical suggestion is if the user were to:

  • navigate directly to Opentable, they could successfully make reservation.
  • navigate to the restaurant's website and try to book a reservation, they'd be redirected to Opentable where they would successfully make a reservation.

So the issue, I think, is trying to book a reservation directly from Google Maps results.