Key facts
- The most common way a business loses an account during an agency switch is admin level access to Google Ads, Google Business Profile, or the domain registrar never actually transferring, because nobody wrote it into either contract.
- Ask for at least twelve months of historical performance data exported before your old agency's access is cut off; some platforms make historical data harder to reconstruct once the account that built it is gone.
- Check your existing agency contract for a notice period before you sign a new one. Many retainer agreements require thirty to ninety days' written notice, and running two agencies in parallel briefly is normal, not wasteful.
- Ad copy, keyword lists, landing page files, and creative assets built during the old contract are yours by default in most agency agreements, but confirm this in writing rather than assuming it.
- A takeover RFP should require the new agency to prove it has working, tested access to every account before your old agency's access is revoked, not after.
What a Takeover Covers, and Where a Rebuild Begins
Scope this RFP as the handover and stabilization of accounts that already exist and already run: Google Ads, SEO and its associated tools, your Google Business Profile, and your website's hosting and domain. The job is to receive control cleanly, verify nothing is broken, and keep performance from dropping during the switch, not to rebuild everything from scratch on day one.
Separate the takeover itself from any strategy change you want afterward. A new agency may recommend a different campaign structure, a redesigned site, or a new keyword strategy, but that is a second, later decision with its own price and timeline. Bidders should quote the takeover as its own phase so you can see what stabilizing your existing accounts costs before you commit to changing them.
Name every platform involved explicitly in the RFP, since a vendor quoting "a full takeover" without listing Google Ads, GA4, your Google Business Profile, your domain registrar, and your CMS separately is likely to discover gaps mid transition.
What the New Agency Needs Before Anything Switches Over
The new agency needs administrator or owner level access to each platform in scope: Google Ads account access, GA4 property access, Google Business Profile ownership or manager access, your domain registrar or DNS panel, and your CMS or hosting login. Granting this does not require removing your own access or your old agency's access on the same day; overlap is the point of this RFP.
Provide the new agency with your current contract terms for the old agency, specifically the notice period and any exclusivity clause, so they can plan the transition date realistically instead of assuming access will appear the moment you sign.
If you have them, hand over existing brand guidelines, past creative files, and a list of every third party integration connected to your ad accounts or website, since a takeover that misses one connected tool can quietly break tracking or a lead form without anyone noticing for weeks.
What You Keep Control Of, Regardless of Which Agency Runs It
This is the section most agencies skip when they are the ones losing the account, so put it in writing yourself before you sign anything with the old or new vendor. You should own the ad accounts, the domain, the Google Business Profile, and every piece of creative and copy built for you, under your own logins, not a vendor's master account.
Ask your old agency directly whether any of your accounts sit inside their agency level Google Ads manager account rather than a standalone account you control; if so, migrating out cleanly, without losing conversion history, is its own task and should be scoped and priced as one.
Require the new agency to confirm in writing, once the takeover is complete, that every account now sits under logins and billing you control, with no dependency on either agency's own infrastructure.
Access Verified First, Then Performance Held Steady
Set a first milestone before any old access is removed: the new agency logs into every named platform and confirms, in writing, that access works and that historical data, at minimum the last twelve months, is visible and exportable. Do not cancel the old contract until this milestone is signed off.
Set a second milestone thirty days after the switch: performance on the accounts that already existed, campaigns, rankings, review volume, has not dropped compared with the trailing period before the takeover. A takeover that quietly lets performance slide for a month while the new agency "gets oriented" has failed its own job.
Build in an explicit overlap window, commonly two to four weeks, where both agencies technically have access, so a single point of failure never takes your accounts offline during the handoff itself.
How to Score Takeover Proposals
Weight bidders heavily toward demonstrated takeover experience, not general agency capability: 30 percent for a written transition plan with named milestones and an overlap window, 20 percent for evidence of handling a comparable takeover before, 20 percent for how they propose to preserve historical performance data, 15 percent for price, and 15 percent for references specifically about a takeover, not a fresh engagement.
A proposal that reads like a standard new client onboarding, with no mention of overlap, notice periods, or historical data risk, has probably not done this before and will learn the hard parts on your account.
Ask references one pointed question: did anything stop working, a tracking pixel, a lead form, a review link, during the switch, and how long did it take to notice and fix it.
Questions Every Takeover Bidder Should Answer
Score bidders only after they answer these in writing: How many agency to agency takeovers have you completed in the past two years, and for what platforms? What is your standard overlap window, and why? How do you verify that historical performance data, not just current settings, has transferred intact? What is your process if the outgoing agency is slow or unresponsive during handoff?
Also ask what they do in the first week specifically to check for broken tracking, since a takeover that inherits an account with a silently broken conversion pixel can look like a performance drop that has nothing to do with the new agency's work.
Related questions
Two to four weeks is common, long enough for the new agency to confirm working access and stable data before the old contract ends. Running two agencies briefly costs less than a gap where nobody has working control of your accounts.
Usually yes, if the accounts are standalone and not buried inside the old agency's own manager account. If they are, migrating out cleanly is a separate, more careful task, and the new agency should flag that risk before the switch, not after.
After. Require the new agency to sign off, in writing, that access works and historical data is visible before you give the old agency formal notice. Cancelling first risks a gap with no one controlling the accounts.
Tracking pixels, conversion tags, and third-party integrations connected to ad accounts or the website are the most common casualties, since they are easy to overlook until a report comes back wrong weeks later. A written first-week check for exactly this should be part of the RFP.
You should, and most standard agency agreements say so, but confirm it in writing rather than assuming it, and check whether any account sits inside the agency's own manager account rather than one you control directly.
SearchPod is a vendor for this kind of work and would answer this RFP; the acceptance tests here are the ones we agree to.
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