Who Owns Your Google Ads Account, Website and Domain When You Hire an Agency?

The email usually lands on a Friday afternoon. “We’re ending things with our agency. They’re saying the Google Ads account belongs to them. Is that true?”

Sometimes it is. More often, nobody ever decided, and the honest answer depends on whose email address sits in a handful of settings the owner has never seen.

So, who owns your Google Ads account when an agency runs it? You should, along with your website, domain, GA4 property, Google Business Profile, Meta pages and call-tracking numbers, with the agency added as a user or partner. Whether you actually do comes down to who created each account and who holds admin or owner rights today. The time to check is now, while everyone is still friendly.

Our rule with our own clients is simple, and we’d hold any agency you hire to it. The business owns every account and the agency gets access. If the agency vanished tomorrow, nothing would stop working.

Below we go asset by asset, then lay out a 30-day plan for switching agencies without losing your ad history, your reviews or your phone number.

Who owns my Google Ads account if an agency set it up?

The account belongs to whoever has Admin access to it and pays for it. Agencies manage clients through a manager account (still often called an MCC). A manager account linked to yours can see and edit campaigns, but per Google’s manager account documentation, “linking a manager account doesn’t automatically grant administrative ownership.” Some agencies do hold that ownership, and if they do, they can transfer it to another manager account or remove it.

What you want is your own login, on your own business email, with Admin access. Per Google’s access level page, Admin users can add and remove users, change access levels, accept or reject manager account link requests, and unlink managers. Standard users can edit campaigns but can’t do those things. Google also notes that an account with a single admin can lose access to tags if that person becomes unavailable, so add a second admin you trust (a partner, your office manager).

How to check, in five minutes:

1. Sign in at ads.google.com with your own Google account. If you can’t, that’s your answer.
2. Go to Admin → Access and security. Look at the Users tab for your access level, and the Managers tab for which manager accounts are linked.
3. Go to Billing → Settings and see whose payments profile and card are on file.

Two billing details catch people. If the agency pays Google and invoices you, your account may run on monthly invoicing through their manager account. Google’s unlinking rules say an account on that setup stops serving once the paying manager is unlinked, so set up your own billing first. Second, your campaign history stays with the account when a manager is unlinked. That history (years of search terms, conversion data, quality signals) is worth keeping, and it’s the main reason we push clients to own the account rather than start fresh.

Google’s third-party policy for agencies also requires “a separate account for each end-advertiser,” and lists verifying a customer’s account as your own as a significant violation. If your ads run inside an account that also runs other businesses’ ads, you’re a line item in someone else’s account, with nothing to take when you leave.

Ownership vs. access: the asset-by-asset table

“Ownership” and “access” get mixed up constantly. Ownership means the asset is in your name or your account and survives without the agency. Access means someone can log in and work on it. You want the first and you give out the second.

Go row by row and mark each one “mine,” “theirs” or “no idea.” Every “no idea” is a conversation to have this month.

Do the check from your own logins. “Oh, you have access” from the agency doesn’t count until you’ve signed in and seen your name next to the right role.

Your domain name: check the registrant today

If you only fix one thing on this list, fix this one. Your domain controls your website and your email. Whoever controls the registrar account can point both anywhere.

The person or company listed as registrant is the domain holder. Many WHOIS lookups now show “Redacted for privacy,” so the real test is whether you can log in to the registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace Domains, Cloudflare and so on) with your own account and see the domain listed there.

If the agency registered it in their account, the fastest fix is usually an account change at the same registrar. Most registrars can move a domain from one customer account to another without a transfer.

Moving to a new registrar takes longer. You need an authorization code, and per ICANN’s registrant FAQ, your registrar must give it to you within five calendar days of your request. Registrars may refuse a transfer within 60 days of initial registration or a prior transfer, and changes to the registrant name, organization or email can trigger a 60-day lock too.

Those lock rules are being rewritten. ICANN’s policy council voted in March 2025 to drop the 60-day change-of-registrant lock and set a 30-day lock on new and newly transferred domains, per Domain Incite, but the new policy takes time to implement. Ask your registrar which rules apply to you before you plan a deadline around them.

DNS is the trap that catches somebody every year. If your domain’s nameservers point to the agency’s Cloudflare or hosting account, your email’s MX records live there too. Before you change anything, export or screenshot every DNS record. Otherwise the website might survive the switch while your email quietly stops arriving.

Website, hosting and CMS: who has the keys?

Websites are messier, because an agency can hold one layer and not another.

Start with hosting. If the agency hosts dozens of client sites on one server and bills you a monthly “care plan,” your site lives in their account. That can be fine while you work together. Make sure the contract says they’ll hand over a full backup (files and database) and help migrate within a set number of days when you leave.

Then the CMS. On WordPress, you want your own Administrator user. On Squarespace or Wix, the site owner should be you, with the agency as a contributor. Watch premium themes and plugins licensed under the agency’s account. They keep working after you leave, but stop updating, which becomes a security problem within a year.

Design and copy are the legal part, and we’re not lawyers. Per U.S. Copyright Office Circular 30, work by an outside contractor only counts as a “work made for hire” if it falls into one of nine listed categories and both sides sign a written agreement saying so. A website usually doesn’t fit neatly, so the safer route is a contract clause that assigns copyright in the design, code you paid for and content to you on payment. Ask your attorney to look at it.

If a redesign is coming anyway, our post on signs your website needs a redesign helps decide whether to migrate the old site or start over. And our web design service sets every site up in the client’s own hosting account, for exactly this reason.

GA4, Tag Manager and Search Console

GA4 is where agencies most often “own” data without meaning to. Someone creates a property inside the agency’s own Analytics account because it’s quicker, and three years later you discover your history lives somewhere you can’t reach.

Moving a property later is harder than it sounds. Google’s rules for moving a property require Administrator and Editor roles on both the source and destination accounts, and the two accounts must belong to the same Google Marketing Platform organization. Most small businesses don’t have one.

So in practice, get Administrator on the property now, so you can add and remove users yourself. If the agency’s Analytics account holds only your property, have them make you an Administrator at the account level too. If neither happens, create a new property in your own account, run both side by side for a few months, and export the reports you care about from the old one. It’s tedious. It works.

Do the same for Google Tag Manager (you want admin and publish rights on the container) and Search Console (you want to be a verified owner). Tag Manager matters more than people think. Whoever controls it controls your conversion tracking, which is the foundation of everything in our Google Ads self-audit.

Google Business Profile: primary owner, owners and managers

Your Business Profile is the asset that’s hardest to replace. The reviews, photos and years of history on it can’t be moved to a new listing. Every profile has exactly one primary owner, can have several owners, and can have managers, per Google’s owners and managers page. Owners control users and can delete the profile. Managers can edit almost everything but can’t add or remove people.

The setup we recommend: you are primary owner, a second person at your company is an owner, and the agency is a manager. That’s it.

Timing matters if you’re fixing this late. New owners must wait seven days before they can transfer primary ownership or remove other users. So if an agency adds you as owner on day 1, you can’t take primary ownership until day 8. Plan for it.

If the agency won’t respond at all, Google has a request-access process: search for your business at business.google.com/add, choose Request access, and the current owner has three days to respond. If they don’t, you may be able to claim the profile, though Google says the option isn’t always available. Whatever you do, don’t create a second profile for the same business. Duplicates are a common path to suspension, which we cover in our Business Profile reinstatement guide.

Meta business portfolio, Pages and ad accounts

Meta is the platform where an agency-created asset is hardest to get back. According to Leadsie’s summary of Meta’s rules, an ad account created or claimed by a business portfolio can’t be removed or transferred to another portfolio afterward. If your agency created your ad account inside their portfolio, you likely can’t take it with you. You start a new one, and the reporting history stays behind.

Your Facebook Page and Instagram account are more portable, but only if you, as a person, still have full control of them. Check today in Business settings → Accounts in your own portfolio.

The setup we’d insist on:

• You create the business portfolio, with two admins from your company.
• Your portfolio owns the Page, the Instagram account, the ad account and the pixel (dataset).
• Your card is on the ad account.
• The agency gets access as a Partner, which you can remove in one click.

If you’re running Meta ads now, our guide to Facebook and Instagram ads for local businesses covers the campaign side.

Call-tracking numbers and phone porting

Nobody thinks about this one until the line goes dead. Agencies often buy tracking numbers in their own CallRail (or similar) account and put them on your ads, your website, and sometimes your Business Profile and directory listings. When the contract ends and they cancel those numbers, every place they appear now rings nowhere.

Numbers can usually move. Per the FCC’s porting guide, you can generally keep a number when you change providers if you stay in the same area, you should start service with the new provider before cancelling the old one, simple ports are supposed to be processed in one business day, and the old provider can’t refuse a port over an unpaid balance. The catch for agency-held numbers: the port request comes from the account holder, which is the agency. So ask, in writing, for every tracking number to be ported to your own call-tracking or carrier account before the end date.

Two rules we follow: your main business number is never a tracking number on paper you don’t own, and on your Business Profile a tracking number goes in as primary only with your real number listed as an additional phone. Our call tracking guide explains why.

Contract clauses to look for, and how to switch marketing agencies

Before you sign with anyone (us included), look for these in the agreement:

• All ad, analytics, profile and social accounts are created in the client’s name, or transferred to the client on request.
• Copyright in the website, ad creative, photos and copy you paid for passes to you on payment.
• You pay Google and Meta directly. If the agency bills media, you get an itemized split of media vs. fees every month.
• A notice period you can live with. Thirty days is common; watch for auto-renewing 12-month terms with a short cancellation window.
• Exit deliverables (admin access confirmed, backups, DNS records, number ports, reports) due within a set number of business days.
• No fee to get your access back. A reasonable charge for migration labor is normal, but you shouldn’t pay ransom for your own accounts.

Our post on questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency adds the performance questions.

A 30-day offboarding timeline

1. Day 1 (before you give notice): fill in the ownership table above. Log in to everything you can. Screenshot users, billing and DNS.
2. Days 1 to 7: ask for admin or owner access on anything you don’t own yet, and new owner roles on your Business Profile. Start the seven-day clock.
3. Days 7 to 14: set up your own billing in Google Ads and Meta, start domain and hosting moves, request number ports, and get a full website backup.
4. Days 14 to 21: take primary ownership of the Business Profile, confirm GA4, Tag Manager and Search Console roles, and export reports.
5. Days 21 to 30: give your new agency access, then remove the old one. Unlink their manager account last, after billing is yours.

If an agency refuses access to accounts in your name, stay polite and put the request in writing. Cite the contract. For Google Ads, you can file a report under Google’s third-party policy, and for your Business Profile, use the request-access process. If the domain or site is held hostage, that’s a letter from your attorney.

Next step: spend 20 minutes this week on the table above. If you find gaps and want a second opinion on the Google Ads side, our free Ad Spend Leak Check is a 10-minute video of your account, in your inbox within 48 hours, and the first thing we look at is who owns it. More on how we work is on our Google Ads management page.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns my Google Ads account, me or my agency?

You should. The account belongs in practice to whoever holds Admin access and pays Google. Ask for your own login with Admin access, check Admin then Access and security to see users and linked manager accounts, and make sure your card is on file. Google's third-party policy also requires agencies to use a separate account for each advertiser they manage.

How do I transfer my Google Ads account from my agency?

You usually don't transfer the account itself. Get Admin access on your own email, set up billing in your name if the agency was paying, then unlink the agency's manager account or link your new agency's. Campaign history stays with the account. If the agency's manager account holds administrative ownership, ask them to transfer or remove that ownership.

What do I do if my agency won't give me access to my website?

Start with a written request that cites your contract and lists exactly what you need: hosting login, CMS administrator account, a full backup and DNS records. Check whether the domain is registered to you at the registrar. If the agency holds both and refuses, have an attorney send a letter. Meanwhile, keep your Business Profile and ad accounts secured so leads keep coming.

Can I keep my call-tracking numbers when I switch agencies?

Usually, if you ask before the contract ends. Tracking numbers sit in whoever's account bought them, so the agency typically has to request the port to your own call-tracking or carrier account. The FCC says simple ports should take one business day and you should not cancel the old service first. Numbers cancelled before porting are often gone for good.

How do I switch marketing agencies without losing anything?

Inventory every account before you give notice: Google Ads, GA4, Tag Manager, Search Console, Business Profile, Meta, domain, hosting and tracking numbers. Get admin or owner rights on each, move billing to your name, take backups and DNS records, port numbers, and only then remove the old agency. Allow about 30 days, since some transfers have waiting periods.

Written by Sean Melton

Sean Melton is the founder of First Byte, a digital marketing agency in The Woodlands, TX. A former global CMO of a $250M software company, he has spent his career inside the businesses he markets. His team runs paid social, search, CTV and creative for brands like Equinox, Kroger and Viceroy, and shares what works here.