Who Owns Your Google Accounts When You Leave an Agency?

The call I least like taking

It goes like this. A business owner has decided to leave their agency, or the agency has closed, and they have just discovered that their Google Business Profile is owned by an email address they do not control. Or the Google Ads account, with three years of data in it, sits under the agency’s manager account and they cannot get in. Or the domain name was registered by the agency and renewal is in six weeks.

None of that is illegal. Some of it is written into contracts people signed without reading. But it turns a simple decision, “I want to try someone else,” into a negotiation, and the person holding the logins has all the leverage. I would rather you never have that call, so here is how to make sure you do not.

The principle: you own, they are a guest

Every account that represents your business should be owned by an email address you control, ideally one on your own domain rather than an agency address or a personal Gmail. The agency gets access as a manager or user, which you can revoke in a minute. That is the whole rule, and it is how we set up every client from day one. We have put it in writing on our why us page because people tell us other agencies do it the other way round.

The reason agencies sometimes keep ownership is rarely sinister. It is convenience. Setting up an account under their own login is quicker than walking you through it. But convenience for them becomes a problem for you the day you want to leave, and the fix is much harder then than it is now.

Google Business Profile: check who is primary owner

This is the one that matters most for a local business, because your Business Profile is your listing on Google Maps and in the map results, with your reviews attached. Google’s help page on owners and managers explains that “a Business Profile can have multiple owners but only one primary owner,” and only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership or remove other owners.

To check: sign in to the Google account you think controls it, search your business name on Google, and open the profile management. Look at the list of people with access and find who is marked primary owner. If it is you, good. If it is an agency address, ask them in writing to transfer primary ownership to your email. A reasonable agency will do it the same week. Google’s page notes that a profile must have at least one other owner or manager before primary ownership can be transferred, so add yourself as an owner first if you are not already listed.

Google Ads: check who has admin access

Google Ads has several access levels. The one that matters is admin, because according to Google’s access levels help page, only admin-level users can give account access, change access levels and cancel invitations. If the only admin is the agency, you cannot remove them, and you cannot add the next person.

Open Google Ads, go to Admin, then Access and security, and read the list. You should be an admin on the account and the account should belong to you, not sit only inside the agency’s manager account. If you leave, you want to unlink their manager account and keep the history, the conversions and the learning that the campaigns built up. Starting a fresh account means starting the learning from zero, which is a real cost that rarely gets mentioned on the way out.

Analytics, tags, the domain and the site itself

Google Analytics and Tag Manager follow the same logic: you should be an administrator on the property, with the agency added as a user. Check the admin section of each.

The domain name is the one people forget. Look it up at the registrar where it was bought, or ask the agency which registrar holds it and for the login to be in your name. If the agency registered it “to save you the hassle,” ask for it to be transferred to an account you own. The same goes for hosting. A website you cannot move is not a website you own. Our hidden marketing leaks post covers a few more of these quiet dependencies.

And the data. Reports, keyword research, call recordings, the list of pages that were built and why. Ask for an export before you give notice, and put in writing that the data is yours. Most contracts say so already. Some do not.

A ten-minute checklist

Business Profile: you are the primary owner. Google Ads: you are an admin and the account is yours, with the agency linked as a manager. Analytics and Tag Manager: you are an administrator. Domain and hosting: registered to you, login in your name. Data: you have an export and the contract says it is yours.

If everything is in order, you will never need this list. If one item is not, fix it now, while the relationship is friendly. The day you decide to leave is the worst day to find out you cannot.

If you are not sure how to check any of these, send me a note through our contact page. I will walk you through it on a call whether or not you ever work with us. This is the part of the business I care about most, and it costs you nothing to check.