How do you use link text as value in schema.org value?

Question

I'm trying to markup some HTML with schema.org microdata, however I'm getting an issue with my markup:

Here's my current HTML:

<div>
    <h1>
        <a href="example.com/1234">The name is here</a>
        <small>(Some extra info)</small>
    </h1>
    Tons more content about the thing
</div>

What I want to do is describe the existence of the thing and its name and tried:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing">
    <h1>
        <a href="example.com/1234" itemprop="name">The name is here</a>
        <small>(Some extra info)</small>
    </h1>
    Tons more content about the thing
</div>

But that gives me this incorrect metadata:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing">
    <h1 itemprop="name">
        <a href="example.com/1234">The name is here</a>
        <small>(Some extra info)</small>
    </h1>
    Tons more content about the thing
</div>

But this is also incorrect as it incorrectly identifies (Some extra info) as part of the name (which it isn't):

In conclusion, is there a way to apply itemprop to an <a href=> link without it using the URL as the value for the property?

Answer 1

Microdata does not provide a way to denote that an itemprop on an a element should not produce a URL as value.

You have to add another element that

• is one of the elements that produces string values in Microdata (tl;dr: not time and not one of the elements that can have a href/src attribute), and

• only contains the content that you want to have as value of the property.

In your example, you could add a span element:

<a href="example.com/1234"><span itemprop="name">The name is here</span></a>

<span itemprop="name"><a href="example.com/1234">The name is here</a></span>