Departed from Agency, now what?

[champagneup]

you won’t get that account. its common practice for crappy agencies. start from the ground up and set expectations that things are going to need to ramp up.

[ctclocal]

You should always set up your own Google ads account. The PPC agency through thier MCC will request agency access, not admin or ownership. If they do, find a reputable PPC agency.

Nothing is secret sauce or proprietary to the agency. How they analyze and act on the data will set the agency’s process. That can be proprietary, not the data or the account.

I can literally tell my clients everything I do. Just like a mechanic can do the same for car repairs. I’ll still use a trained professional vs trying to do it myself.

[s_hecking]

Just as an aside. If your account spend is small, say $1500-2000 or less per month, it’s not uncommon for agencies to only spend 2-3 days each month making changes to your account.

Most of the work on small accounts happens in the first couple months, then the agency spreads the cost over 12 months to make setups affordable for small businesses. Research, strategy, setup, etc all take time and small companies don’t want to take a big fee hit in months 1-3.

[ppcwithyrv]

If the agency owns the account, you may not get it back, so pull all the historical data you can now. Check whether your business still has admin access, because if you do, you may be able to unlink them and keep the account.

[Odd-Dot1930]

You definitely won’t get it back if they don’t want you to have it. You’ll have to start from scratch. Hopefully you have some reports or something that you can build from.

[Legitimate_Big_3737]

Next time, make sure it is your account and you only give the agency access through their manager account so we can remove access once parted.
Is there anything in your contract with them confirming that you have rightful ownership to the google ads account, even if they created it for you?

[gladue]

Be a super affiliate in the home services space. But go direct to the advertisers, not through CPA networks.

[DGADK]

I think we’d all love to hear who the agency was

[QuantumWolf99]

The agency claiming proprietary ownership of your account is standard shady practice where they built campaigns in their MCC not yours so they control the data… start fresh in a new account under your ownership and the historical data loss matters less than you think because Google’s learning phase only needs 30-50 conversions to optimize which takes 2-3 weeks at local service volumes.

Historical performance data is useful for benchmarking but algorithmic learning doesn’t transfer between accounts anyway so you’re rebuilding optimization either way… the bigger risk is letting that agency keep running ads in their account after you leave because they could tank performance out of spite or keep charging management fees while doing nothing, so cut access immediately and launch your own account with proper conversion tracking and budget controls from day one.

[Afraid_Inspector2315]

The account belongs to whoever’s credit card is there. If it’s theirs, then there is nothing you can do.

If it’s yours, you can reach out to Google Support and they will explain to you the steps to get your account back.

As for the reason for firing them, the question is simple: are the results good? If yes then it’s none of your business whether they make changes to the account daily, weekly or even once a year. You want results and they are getting you results. Sometimes not touching the account is the best strategy.

If the results are bad then you don’t need an excuse to fire them. They are just not delivering regardless of how many changes they do on the account.

[philbarnhart]

The ‘4 locations’ raised an alert in my mind – from long experience – make sure you have control of your Google Business Profiles and disconnect them from the agency account that may be running location extensions. Also make sure to disconnect GA and Search Console.

You can complain to Google if they are a Google partner or control an MCC. If you first create your own Google Ads account, you can file a complaint and/or get assistance via Google.

With your current ads run by this agency, you can click on the three dots on the ad and check out the ‘About This Advertiser’ to get more info for your complaint.

This process actually does work on occasion – not as consistently as it should, but they do risk having their entire account suspended by Google. You should ask for an export of all your data – ads, keywords, search terms, negatives etc.

[tpbynum]

This is exactly why vendor accountability matters so much. Beyond the account ownership issue (which yeah, you’re probably stuck starting fresh), the real red flag was discovering they were barely touching your account. Going forward, establish clear expectations upfront: you own all accounts, agency gets manager access only, and you get monthly reporting on exactly what actions were taken. Most good agencies will be transparent about their process and time allocation.