Guide · Updated October 4, 2026
Keep your marketing accounts in your own name
Updated October 4, 2026
Your business should hold the top role on every account that keeps your history or reaches your customers: the ad accounts, Analytics, Tag Manager, Search Console, the Business Profile, the domain and the phone numbers. A provider gets a role inside your account, never an account of its own with your name on it. Check each one now.
Whoever created the account decides who can leave with it
On most platforms, the account belongs to whoever created it. Access granted later can be taken back. The account itself often cannot move.
That rule is invisible while things go well. The same campaigns run, the same reports arrive, and nobody asks whose name is on the account. It surfaces on the day you want to change providers, and by then the history, the reviews and the phone number customers know are sitting in someone else's account.
The fix is the same on every platform. Create the account in your business's name, invite the provider into it at a role below the top one, and keep at least two people of your own on the top role, on company email addresses.
- Your account, their access
- You create the account. The provider is invited in, or linked from its manager account. You hold the top role.
- Leaving is something you do. You remove their access, and everything stays where it is.
- Their account, your name on it
- The provider creates the account inside its own structure and gives you a login, or no login at all.
- Leaving is something you ask for. On some platforms the account cannot leave at all, and you start again from nothing.
Set it up this way
Avoid
Ad accounts: Google, Microsoft and Meta
Google Ads: a linked provider is fine, an owning one is not
Providers manage Google Ads through a manager account linked to yours. Linking is normal. Ownership is the part to check, because an owner gets full administrative access and a client account can only have one.
Ownership starts with who created the account. A manager account that creates a client account owns it from the start. A manager that links an account you already had does not own it unless it is given ownership. So the safest start is an account you opened yourself.
Open Admin, then Access and security. The user list should show at least one Admin on your own company address. The Managers page shows which manager accounts are linked, and which one is the owner. An owner can add and remove your users, so only a manager you trust should hold it. Anyone with Admin access on your account can unlink a manager at any time, without the provider's help.
Check first
Admin
The only level that can add people, remove them and change their access.
What stops working when you unlink a manager account?
Your campaigns and their history stay in your account, along with every feature. Three things change:
Audience lists the manager shared with you stop filling, and campaigns that rely on them stop running.
If conversions were counted by the manager's own tag, it stops counting new clicks. Clicks made before the unlink still count for the conversion window, typically 30 days.
If your ads are paid on monthly invoicing and the manager is the one paying, your ads stop serving the moment you unlink. Move billing first.
Who pays, and how is that changed?
Billing is set separately from access. When a provider pays Google for your ads on its own monthly invoice, billing has to move before anyone unlinks. Between two providers, Google says the current provider must start the Change who pays request, and Google support reviews it.
If you pay Google directly, with your own card or your own invoice, there is nothing to move. A payments profile's country can never be changed, so a profile set up in the wrong country means a new profile, not an edit.
Microsoft Advertising: an account created by the provider cannot be unlinked
Microsoft works like Google in daily use and differs in one way that matters. If the provider creates your account under its own manager account, Microsoft says it cannot be unlinked from that provider, and you will have to re-create it.
Create the account yourself, with your business as the customer, then accept the provider's link request. Only a Super Admin can accept or decline one, and a request lapses after 30 days. Once linked, the account owner can unlink a manager at any time.
Meta: an ad account never leaves the portfolio it was made in
Meta groups a business's Pages, ad accounts and people in a business portfolio. An ad account created inside a portfolio is a permanent part of it. Adding an existing ad account to a portfolio may move it there permanently too.
So the ad account has to be created in your portfolio, and the provider added as a partner. A partner can be given full control and still cannot share your assets with another business. Only the business that owns an asset can do that.
Pages follow the same pattern. A Page in your portfolio is owned by your business. A provider that only requested access to it is not the owner, and the Page still shows you as the owner.
Measurement: Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console
Google Analytics: one account for the company, with you as Administrator
Google describes an Analytics account as a collection of properties whose data is owned by a single legal entity, and recommends one account per company. The property inside it holds your website's data.
Only an Administrator can add and remove users. Editor controls the property's settings but cannot manage users, and Marketer, Analyst and Viewer sit below that. Give the provider Editor or Marketer, and keep Administrator on your side.
If a provider set up the property in its own account, it can be moved to yours. The move needs Administrator and Editor rights on both accounts, and it moves all reporting data rather than copying it. The tag on your site stays the same.
What if nobody on our side has access any more?
Google has a recovery route: an analytics.txt file uploaded to your site, proof that you own any linked Google Ads or AdSense account, and a form. It only works if you can prove ownership of every website listed in the Analytics account. A property that tracks a site you no longer control can block the whole request.
Tag Manager: two administrators, always
Tag Manager has account roles, Administrator and User, and container permissions up to Publish. A provider that puts changes live needs Publish on the container. It does not need to be the account Administrator.
Google's own advice is to keep at least two active administrators. If every administrator is gone, Google support cannot add users for you, and nobody in your business can reach the tags on your own site.
No recovery
Google support cannot add a Tag Manager user once every administrator has gone.
Search Console: keep a verified owner of your own
A verified owner proved ownership with a token: a DNS record, a file or a tag on the site. A delegated owner was granted ownership by a verified owner. Full and Restricted users can view data but cannot add anyone.
Verification lasts only while Google can still find the token. To remove a provider that is a verified owner, remove it under Users and permissions and remove its token too, or it can verify again. If every verified owner is removed, every user loses the property after a grace period. Keep your own verification in place, and leave the DNS record alone after it succeeds.
Your listing, your domain and your phone numbers
Business Profile: be the primary owner
A Business Profile has one primary owner, any number of owners and managers. Only owners can add or remove people. Only the primary owner can hand primary ownership to someone else, and that person must already be an owner or manager.
If someone else controls your profile and will not hand it over, request access at business.google.com/add if your business has a shop or office customers visit. A service-area business with no public address asks Google support instead. The current owner gets an email and has 3 days to respond. With no response, you may be offered the option to claim the profile, though Google says that option is not always available.
New owners and managers wait 7 days before they can manage some features, so do this before you need to change anything.
Domain: the registrant is whoever the registrar says it is
Your website, your email and your search history all hang off the domain. The person or company listed as the registrant is the one who can approve a move to another registrar, whoever pays the renewal.
Log in to the registrar and check that the registrant is your business, on an address you control. Most registrars let you get the transfer code yourself. If yours does not, it must give it to you within five calendar days of asking. A transfer can be refused for 60 days after the domain was registered or last moved, and a change of registrant locks transfers for 60 days, unless the registrar offered an opt-out and you took it first.
Plan for it
60 days
How long a domain can be locked after it is registered, moved, or changes registrant.
Phone numbers: your main line and your tracking numbers
US rules require phone carriers, internet phone services included, to let a number move with the customer when they switch. Your main line should be on an account in your business's name, so the right to move it is yours.
Call tracking numbers can move too. CallRail says the numbers belong to the account that created them, and a port away needs approval from an administrator on that account. Porting a US or Canadian number away from CallRail is free. CallTrackingMetrics charges no fee to release a number. On a provider's own CallTrackingMetrics plan, the codes to move a number must come from the provider's administrator.
Never cancel the old tracking account until the move is confirmed. CallRail puts a typical port at 4 to 6 weeks, and CallTrackingMetrics says a port cannot be reversed once it has started.
For example
A roofing company leaves its provider. Its ads, Analytics and Business Profile come with it, because they were always in its name. Its tracking numbers sat on the provider's call tracking plan, and they are printed on two trucks and a year of yard signs. Moving them takes a request the provider has to sign off, and four to six weeks.
Checking it all, and leaving cleanly
One afternoon covers every account
Sign in to each one with a company email address and confirm one thing per platform. Write down what you find, and who on your side holds each top role.
- Google Ads: an Admin on your company address under Admin, Access and security.
- Microsoft Advertising: a Super Admin of your own, and an account your business created.
- Meta: the ad account and Page owned by your business portfolio, with the provider listed as a partner.
- Google Analytics: the property in your company's account, with an Administrator of your own.
- Tag Manager: two administrators on your side.
- Search Console: a verified owner of your own.
- Business Profile: your business as primary owner.
- Domain: your business as registrant, on an address you control.
- Phone and tracking numbers: accounts in your business's name, or a written answer on how they would move.
If you are leaving, do it in this order
The order matters more than the speed. Each step protects the next, and the provider's access goes last, not first.
- Get the top role on every account above, while the relationship is still working.
- Move billing to your own card or invoice, so the ads do not stop when a paying manager is unlinked.
- Start moving any tracking numbers you do not own, and keep the old numbers live until the move is confirmed.
- Replace any conversion tags or audience lists that belong to the provider with your own.
- Unlink the provider's manager accounts and remove its partners and users.
Done in that order, the ads keep running, the calls keep ringing and the history stays where it was. The new provider starts from your account, not from nothing.