From the question:

Is there any way to tell Google Docs to not read this directory?

No.

Regarding the "trick", first you will have to convert the Google Docs files to "downloable" format and if you do that you might not need to compress the files.

NOTE: Google Documents file format is not like PDF, DOCX, HTML file formats, it only works on the Google web servers. Google Drive for PC / Mac will show a link to the Google Documents files. If you compress that link the compress file will contain only the URL to the original file. In other words, if you completely delete the original file, the compressed file will not contain anything useful, just a URL to a file that doesn't exist anymore.

From the question:

Is there any way to tell Google Docs to not read this directory?

No. There is no setting for this on Google Documents, Google Drive, Google Account settings (Google help articles usually show what can be done, they very rarely include info about what can't be done and never include notes / warnings about "missing" settings ).

Regarding the "trick", it should work for "downloable" files but not for "native" Google Documents. For this kind of files, first you will have to convert the Google Docs files to "downloable" format first.

NOTE: Google Documents file format is not like PDF, DOCX, HTML file formats, it only works on the Google web servers. Google Drive for PC / Mac will show a link to the Google Documents files. If you compress that link the compress file will contain only the URL to the original file. In other words, if you completely delete the original file, the compressed file will not contain anything useful, just a URL to a file that doesn't exist anymore.

A workaround is to have a second account to be used to store your backups.

From the question:

Is there any way to tell Google Docs to not read this directory?

No.

Regarding the "trick", first you will have to convert the Google Docs files to "downloable" format and if you do that you might not need to compress the files.

From the question:

Is there any way to tell Google Docs to not read this directory?

No.

Regarding the "trick", first you will have to convert the Google Docs files to "downloable" format and if you do that you might not need to compress the files.

NOTE: Google Documents file format is not like PDF, DOCX, HTML file formats, it only works on the Google web servers. Google Drive for PC / Mac will show a link to the Google Documents files. If you compress that link the compress file will contain only the URL to the original file. In other words, if you completely delete the original file, the compressed file will not contain anything useful, just a URL to a file that doesn't exist anymore.