How to switch PPC agency without losing your data (or your leads)
Switching PPC agency goes wrong in one of two ways. Either the Google Ads account turns out to be in the old agency's name and you walk away with nothing, or the new agency rebuilds everything from scratch in month one and you pay for a second learning phase you didn't need. Both are avoidable. This is the handover I'd want a business owner to run, in order: check ownership first, export what matters, give notice with an overlap, brief the new agency properly, then judge them on the right things in the first 60 days.
1. How to know it's actually time
The usual triggers are familiar: cost per enquiry has drifted up over months and nobody can tell you why, the monthly report is built around clicks and impressions, the change history shows almost nothing happening between reports, and the person who sold you the service hasn't been on a call since. We've listed the full set at signs your PPC agency is underperforming.
One caveat before you act on any of them. A switch is itself a restructure, and restructures reset Google's learning, so you're buying at least a month of lost momentum whoever you move to. Our week-by-week Google Ads timeline explains why a fair verdict needs about three months of data. Don't switch on a bad fortnight, or because leads dropped in the month your whole sector went quiet. Make sure the problem is the agency and not the budget, the season or a tracking fault nobody has checked.
That's what a second opinion is for. A free PPC audit runs on read-only viewer access, works through a published 10-point checklist and puts the findings in writing. If the account's in decent shape and the numbers are being reported straight, we'll say so, and you've saved yourself a rebuild.
It's also worth asking whether the model is wrong rather than the vendor. At a small spend a good freelancer may beat any agency on value, and at a large one hiring might beat both: see PPC agency vs freelancer and PPC agency vs in-house.
a switch resets learning · confirm the fault before you pay for the reset
2. The ownership question comes before everything else
Before you export a single report, find out whose account it is. Log in at ads.google.com yourself, not through the agency's dashboard. Under Admin, the access and security page lists every user and manager account attached, and billing shows whose name pays Google. If you can't log in at all, or you've only ever been given a reporting portal, that's your answer.
You'll land in one of three situations.
The account is yours and the agency has manager access
This is how it should be, and it's the arrangement we insist on at GrowthLine: your name, your billing, the agency working through a manager link. Everything stays with you. At the end you remove the old manager account, link the new one, and nothing else changes.
keep · conversion history, negatives, audiences, ad copy, search terms
The account sits under the agency's name and billing
Everything inside it belongs to them by default: the conversion history Smart Bidding has been learning from, the search-term history, every negative keyword you've paid to discover, the audience lists, the tested ad copy and the Quality Score history behind your click prices. Ask in writing for ownership to be transferred to you. Some agencies will grant admin and move the billing without fuss. Some will refuse, or quote a fee. If they won't budge, you're starting again, and the new agency needs to know that on day one so it plans for a learning phase rather than a handover.
the trap · the account should have been yours from the start
The account is yours but the pages and numbers aren't
Check where the landing pages live. On your domain and hosting, fine. On an agency subdomain or inside their page-builder account, they can go dark the day the contract ends, with your ads still pointing at them. Call-tracking numbers are the same: if the number in your ads belongs to the agency's tracking account, it stops ringing when they switch it off. Ask who owns the domain, the hosting, the form routing and every tracking number, and get it in writing.
check · domain, hosting, form notifications, tracking numbers
The account-ownership rule is the one point in our guide to choosing a PPC agency we call an outright deal-breaker, and a switch is exactly where you find out why.
3. What to export before you give notice
Do this while you still have full access, before anyone knows you're leaving. Most agencies behave well at exit, but access sometimes gets narrowed once notice goes in, and you don't want to be arguing about a download in week three of a 30-day notice period. Each of these takes a few minutes.
| Export | Where it lives | Why it matters at handover |
|---|---|---|
| Search terms report, full date range | Search terms report, date range set to the account's whole history, downloaded as a spreadsheet | Months of paid-for evidence of what people actually typed. The new agency's first negatives come straight out of this. |
| Negative keyword lists | Shared library for account-level lists, plus the negatives on each campaign and ad group | Every negative is a lesson you've already paid for. Start from zero and you pay for the same junk clicks again. |
| Conversion action setup | Goals, then the conversions summary: name, source, counting method, value, status of each action | Defines what “a lead” meant in the old numbers, so the new agency's cost per enquiry is comparable rather than flattering. |
| Campaign structure, keywords, ads and assets | Google Ads Editor export, or the keyword and ad tables downloaded from the account | Makes any rebuild a matter of hours, and shows the new agency what's been tested already. |
| Audience lists and the remarketing tag | Audience manager, plus wherever the Google tag or Tag Manager container is installed | Lists take months to fill. Keep the tag firing through the handover or they start emptying. |
| Change history | Change history tool, full date range | The honest record of what the old agency did each month, and what it left alone. |
| Landing pages and form routing | Page copy and files from wherever they're hosted, plus where form notifications are sent | Pages hosted by the agency vanish with the contract. Form notifications routed through their inbox stop arriving. |
| GA4 and Tag Manager admin | Admin settings in each property or container | Tracking often lives here, not in Google Ads. Without admin, the new agency can't verify or fix it. |
| Every monthly report and the original proposal | Your inbox | The baseline. You'll judge the new agency against these, so keep them together. |
Then write down one number the agency didn't produce: your cost per enquiry over the last three months, worked out from the enquiries that actually reached you. Take spend from your Google invoices and count the calls and forms yourself. That's the figure the new agency has to beat, and you can trust it because you counted it. To sanity-check it against your sector, our UK cost per lead benchmarks explain how to read a benchmark without being misled by one.
4. Notice periods and the 30-day overlap
Read the contract before you say a word. You're looking for four things: the minimum term, the notice period, whether it auto-renews, and any clause about what happens to the account, pages and tracking when you leave. Give notice in writing, dated, on the earliest day the contract allows, and ask for written confirmation of the end date. Leaving inside a minimum term usually means paying out the remaining months, so weigh that against what staying is costing you each month.
Then use the notice period rather than sitting through it. The day notice goes in, give the new agency read-only viewer access to the account. That's enough for them to audit it, read the change history and write a plan while the old agency's ads keep running. On the last day of notice you remove the old manager link and the new one takes over an account that never stopped. That's the point of the overlap: the conversion data keeps accruing, and the learning phase you can't avoid starts from a warm account instead of an empty one.
Ask the outgoing agency, politely and in writing, for no structural changes during notice unless you've agreed them. Then keep an eye on change history through the month. If campaigns get paused or budgets cut without your say, you'll see it there, and you can reverse it yourself because it's your account.
For what it's worth, our own terms are on the pricing page: a flat monthly fee from £750, no setup fee, a three-month minimum term, media spend paid by you directly to Google, and the account in your name throughout.
notice day · viewer access for the new agency · old link removed on the end date
5. Briefing the new agency so month one isn't a rebuild
Hand over the export pack from section 3. Then tell them what isn't in the account and never will be: what a good enquiry looks like and what a bad one looks like, roughly what a job is worth, the areas you cover and the ones you'd rather not, when your year is busy and quiet, how many enquiries a week you can handle, what's been tried before, and why you're leaving, specifically. “They weren't proactive” tells a new agency nothing. “Cost per enquiry roughly doubled over six months and nobody could explain it” tells them where to look first.
Then have the rebuild conversation openly, because a new agency's instinct is to rebuild. Sometimes that's right: if tracking is recording the wrong thing, everything's crammed into one campaign, or broad match is running with no negative list, the structure is the problem. Sometimes it's wrong: if the structure is sound and the real problem was neglect, a rebuild throws away conversion history to fix something that wasn't broken. Ask them to put in writing what they'll keep, what they'll change and why, before they touch anything. Every restructure resets learning, so the decision deserves a reason.
An example of a rebuild that was justified: a DPF-cleaning specialist on £10,000 a month came to us with tracking set up poorly, low ad rank and targeting pulling in the wrong searches. We consolidated the campaigns onto portfolio bidding and remade the landing pages to match, and account-wide cost per lead went from £86.50 to £19.97 in the first 30 days. The full write-up is at the DPF cleaning case study, including what it doesn't prove. That's one heavy-spend account in one sector, shown as what a warranted rebuild looks like, not what a switch should be expected to deliver.
6. How to judge the new agency in the first 60 days
You can't fairly judge the numbers in 60 days, but you can judge the behaviour, and the behaviour predicts the numbers. Three checkpoints.
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Days 1–14: tracking verified
Before any optimisation, the new agency should confirm conversion tracking is recording reality: each conversion action's status checked, a live test enquiry submitted and seen to land against the right action, and the tag confirmed to fire on the page. You should have admin access to everything, and a written plan for what they're keeping and changing.
ask for the test result in writing
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Days 15–30: search-term work you can see
Open change history yourself. You should see negatives being added most weeks and bids or ads being adjusted with a reason. Ads are live, the learning phase is running, and the agency has told you it's too early to read cost per enquiry rather than pretending otherwise.
change history is the proof, not the report
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Days 31–60: cost per enquiry against your baseline
Compare the first full month's cost per enquiry with the figure you wrote down in section 3, and look at the enquiries themselves. Are they the kind you'd want more of? The report's headline number should be cost per lead, and the direction of travel should be explainable line by line.
direction of travel, not a verdict
Sixty days tells you whether the work is being done. About three months tells you whether it's working. If the first two checkpoints are missed, don't wait for the third: an agency that hasn't verified tracking by day 14 is reporting numbers it hasn't checked, which is probably the fault you just left the last one for. Our diagnostic for Google Ads clicks with no conversions walks through the tracking check if you want to run it yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Can I switch PPC agency mid-contract?
Usually yes, but on the contract's terms: most agency agreements have a minimum term and then a notice period, and some auto-renew. Read what you signed before you say anything, give notice in writing on the date the contract allows, and ask for written confirmation of the end date. Leaving inside a minimum term normally means paying out the remaining months, so it's worth checking whether the exit cost is smaller than the cost of staying.
Will I lose my Google Ads data if I switch agency?
Only if the account isn't yours. If the Google Ads account is in your name and the agency works through manager access, everything stays: conversion history, search-term history, negative keyword lists, audiences and ad copy. If the agency owns the account, all of that is theirs by default, and you should ask in writing for ownership to be transferred to you. If they refuse, export what you can while you still have access and plan for the new agency to rebuild.
How long does it take to switch PPC agency?
Work to your notice period, which is commonly 30 days. Used properly, that month is the overlap: the new agency gets read-only viewer access on day one, audits the account and writes its plan while the old agency's ads keep running, then takes over the day the notice ends. Setting a campaign up properly takes one to two weeks, so a new agency that has had the full notice month shouldn't need to go dark at handover.
Should I get a second opinion before switching PPC agency?
Yes, because a switch resets the account's learning and costs you at least a month of momentum, so it's worth being sure the agency is the problem rather than the budget, the season or a tracking fault nobody spotted. A read-only audit of the account, with the findings in writing, tells you that before you give notice. If the account turns out to be sound, you've saved yourself a rebuild.
Get a second opinion before you give notice
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