If Your Marketing Agency Quit Tomorrow, Would You Still Own Your Website? The 7-Asset Check to Run Before You Sign or Cancel.

Here is a question we ask on most first calls, and it usually gets a pause: if your marketing agency closed its doors tomorrow, what would you still control on Monday morning? Not what you paid for. What you can log into, change, and take somewhere else without asking anyone's permission.

For most contractors the honest answer is less than they think. The Google Ads account sits inside the agency's manager account. The domain was bought on the agency's card. The tracking number on the truck lives in the agency's call-tracking login. None of that is illegal, and most of it was simply convenient on setup day. It only becomes a problem on the day you want to leave, which is the day you have the least leverage.

This is the check we wish every contractor ran before signing. Seven assets, where to click, what owning it looks like on screen, and the fix if you don't. Ten minutes with your logins open. If you are already unhappy with your agency, run it before you give notice, for reasons that will be obvious by the end.

What Do You Actually Keep When an Agency Relationship Ends?

The platforms do not referee this. Google will not move an ad account between owners because a client asks nicely, a registrar will not hand a domain to whoever paid the last invoice, and a phone provider releases a number to whoever administers the account it sits in. What you keep is decided by which login created each asset and by what your contract says. Everything else is goodwill.

That matters because the valuable part of each asset is not the login, it is the history behind it: every search term that ever converted, every negative keyword you paid to learn, your reviews and replies, every link ever pointed at your domain, every truck and yard sign a tracking number was printed on. You can rebuild the accounts in an afternoon. You cannot rebuild the history. We wrote a companion piece on how to tell whether your agency is doing anything at all; this one is about what you would walk away with if the answer is no.

Asset 1: Who Owns Your Google Ads Account?

Where to click: sign in at ads.google.com with your own email, open Admin in the left menu, then Access and security. You are looking for your own email address with the word Admin beside it. Google's five access levels are Email only, Billing, Read only, Standard and Admin, and only Admin can add or remove other users. If you are listed as Standard, you can run the campaigns but you cannot control who else can. If you are not listed at all, you do not have an account; the agency does.

Now the second screen most contractors never open. On the same page, the Managers tab shows which manager accounts are linked to yours and whether one holds ownership. Google's documentation is plain about what that means: when a manager account has ownership, its admins can edit user access, managers and product links inside your account. In practice, they can remove you.

What you lose if it stays theirs: the search-term history, the conversion data, the negative keyword lists, the remarketing audiences and the learning that Smart Bidding runs on. A new account starts all of it from zero, with no spend history, which is a worse position than most agencies admit when they quote a relaunch.

The right structure: the account is created under your Google login, your card is on the billing, and the agency is linked as a manager without ownership. They do the work; you hold the keys. It is the first question to ask about any Google Ads management arrangement, ours included.

The fix: ask, in writing, for Admin on your own email and for the manager link's ownership to be released to you. Once you have Admin, you can unlink their manager account yourself on the day you choose.

Asset 2: Who Is the Primary Owner of Your Google Business Profile?

Where to click: search your business name on Google while signed in, open the profile menu, then Business Profile settings and People and access. A profile has three roles: one primary owner, any number of owners, and managers. You want your company's account listed as primary owner, and the agency as a manager.

Two rules from Google's own help page make this asset slower to recover than it looks. The primary owner cannot remove themselves until they transfer primary ownership to someone else. And anyone newly added as an owner or manager has to wait 7 days before they can remove other users or transfer ownership. So a handover done on the day you give notice takes at least a week before you can lock the old agency out, and until then they can still edit your hours, phone number and website link.

Your reviews are not at risk either way. They attach to the profile for your location, not to whoever manages it; losing access means you cannot reply or fix a wrong number, not that anything is deleted.

The right structure: there is no piece of work an agency needs primary ownership for. A manager can post, reply to reviews, upload photos and edit every field. The only things a manager cannot do are add or remove users and delete the profile, which is exactly the list you want to keep for yourself. Any competent Business Profile management can run entirely from manager access.

Asset 3: Whose Name Is on Your Domain?

Your domain is your address on the internet. The website, your email and every link anyone has pointed at you hang off it. If the registrant is the agency, all of that depends on their goodwill and on their card not bouncing at renewal.

Where to click: log into the registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Rebel, Squarespace, whichever it is) with a login that belongs to your company. If you do not have one, that is the answer. A public WHOIS lookup is the second check, but most domains have privacy switched on, so the registrar login is the real test. Inside it, the registrant organisation should be your company, under an email not tied to any single employee.

Two rules decide how long a rescue takes. Under ICANN's transfer policy, changing the registrant triggers a 60-day lock on moving the domain to another registrar, unless the registrar offered an opt-out before the change. ICANN has voted to phase that lock out, but until your registrar drops it, plan for 60 days. For .ca domains, CIRA's rules block a registrar change within 60 days of registration or of a previous registrar change, and require the current registrar to hand over the authorization code within five calendar days of the registrant asking. Either way, a domain rescue is measured in months, not days.

The fix: register domains yourself, on your card, and give the agency DNS access rather than the registrar login. If the agency holds one of yours today, ask in writing for a change of registrant to your company and get the renewal date at the same time.

Asset 4: Can You Take Your Website With You?

Websites come in two kinds: built on code you can export (WordPress, plain HTML, most modern builds), or built inside a proprietary platform the agency rents, where leaving means starting from a blank page.

Where to click: there is no screen for this one. Ask for a full export or backup of the site today, while things are friendly, and ask whose name and card are on the hosting account. If the answer to the export is "we can't" or "that's not included", you have learned what you needed to. If the hosting is in their name, ask for it to be moved to yours, with the agency keeping admin access.

Get a copy of the small things too: logo files, photos, the written copy. They are the first thing that disappears when a relationship sours. Ask that question of any website design proposal before you sign it, ours included. We have written about what a rebuild really costs, which is the number you are protecting here.

Asset 5: Who Is the Administrator on Your Tracking?

Tracking is three accounts, and agencies hold all three more often than any other asset on this list, because clients rarely look.

• Google Analytics. Open Admin, then Account access management. Note the word account. An agency can make you an Administrator on the property while keeping the account above it, and the account is what owns the data. You want your email listed as Administrator at the account level. Google's roles are Administrator, Editor, Marketer, Analyst and Viewer; anything below Administrator means someone else decides who sees your numbers.
• Google Tag Manager. Open Admin, then User Management. You want Administrator at the account level and Publish on the container. Every conversion tag your ads depend on lives in that container. If the agency owns it, your conversion tracking stops the day they leave.
• Search Console. Open Settings, then Users and permissions. There are verified owners, who proved ownership with a token on the site, and delegated owners and users, who were added by one. The trap: if every verified owner is removed, for example because the agency's verification tag comes off the site, everyone else loses access after a grace period. Verify the property yourself, with your own DNS record, so you are a verified owner in your own right.

Asset 6: Who Can Release Your Phone Numbers?

Call-tracking numbers live inside the call-tracking provider's account, and the administrator of that account decides whether a number ports out. CallRail, one of the most common providers, states that a port away must be authorized by the account administrator and typically takes 4 to 6 weeks. If the agency is the administrator, the number leaves when they say so, at the speed they say so.

That is a small problem for a number that only ever appeared in an ad, and a large one for a tracking number that ended up on trucks, yard signs, invoices or the Business Profile, because a number you cannot take with you keeps ringing at an account that no longer forwards to you. We covered the SEO side in Does Call Tracking Hurt Your SEO?; the ownership side is simpler and more expensive.

The right structure: your real business number stays with your carrier, in your company's name, never inside an agency account. Any tracking number that has been printed anywhere sits in a call-tracking account you own, with the agency as a user. If an agency holds a number you need, start the port first, before you give notice; it is the slowest step on this list.

Asset 7: Which Business Manager Owns Your Meta Ad Account and Page?

On Meta, ad accounts, Pages and pixels are owned by a business portfolio, and agencies are meant to be added as a Partner with access to specific assets. Meta's help pages are clear that the business which owns the asset keeps ownership, and partner access does not change that. The flip side is just as clear: if the agency's Business Manager created your ad account, it belongs to them, along with the pixel and every audience built from it.

Where to click: business.facebook.com, then Settings, Accounts, Ad accounts. The ad account should show as owned by your business, with the agency listed under Partners. Check the Page and the pixel or dataset the same way.

The fix: create the ad account and the pixel inside your own Business Manager and grant the agency partner access. If the account is already theirs, it is unlikely to move; you create your own, install your own pixel, and the audiences start again.

The Seven Lines to Put in Any Agency Contract

Every problem above is prevented by a sentence. Put these in the agreement before you sign; a good agency will shrug and agree, because it already works this way.

1. Every account is created in the client's name and remains the client's property. Name all seven: Google Ads, Google Business Profile, domain, website and hosting, Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console, phone numbers, Meta.
2. The client holds the top role on each from day one: Admin, primary owner, registrant, account administrator. The agency works from manager, partner or user access.
3. The client pays Google, Meta, the registrar, the host and the phone provider directly. Whoever pays the platform is who the platform listens to.
4. On notice, any remaining access is handed over within five business days at no charge. Five days is our house number; pick yours, but put a number on it.
5. A full copy of the website files and content is delivered at launch and after every major update.
6. No proprietary platform without written disclosure of exactly what leaves with the agency if you part ways.
7. Historical data is exported to the client on request: ad reports, analytics, call logs, lead records.

Run the Checks Before You Give Notice

Order matters here. An agency fixes access problems quickly for a paying client and slowly for a former one, so do the asking while you are still the former.

1. Run all seven checks in one evening and screenshot each screen with the date visible. You are building a record, not picking a fight.
2. Request the changes while you are still a customer. Admin on Google Ads, primary owner on the Business Profile, registrant change on the domain, Administrator on Analytics and Tag Manager, your own verification on Search Console, partner access flipped on Meta. Frame it as housekeeping, because it is.
3. Start any phone number port first. At 4 to 6 weeks it is the slowest item, and it is the one that costs you real calls if it lands after you leave.
4. Get the website export and the hosting moved.
5. Then give notice.

If an agency refuses, the paths differ by asset. For the domain, the registrar's support team will act on incorporation papers, invoices and the email trail. For the Business Profile, request access from inside the profile; the current owner gets a short window to respond, and Google can grant access when they don't. For Google Ads and Meta, the realistic answer is a new account in your name and a learning period you should not have had to pay for. For the website, it is a rebuild, and now you know what one costs.

Ask any agency, including us, these seven questions before you sign. A good one will have a boring answer for each. If you want a second set of eyes on what you own right now, ask for it when you book a free audit.

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