Who owns your Google Analytics? Losing it means losing your history.
Google Analytics is the most commonly orphaned asset we see, for a simple reason: it gets created by whoever builds the website — a freelancer, an agency, a long-gone employee — and then it just… works. Nobody logs in until the day a new marketer asks for access, and the answer turns out to be that your analytics live in someone else's Google account.
The stakes are different from most tools: analytics data can't be re-created. Lose the property and you lose every year of traffic history, conversions and benchmarks at once. Here's how to audit it and — if it's in the wrong hands — Google's official way to move it.
Understand the two levels
GA4 is structured as account → property. Access is granted at either level: account-level access covers every property in the account; property-level covers just that property. The audit question is who holds the Administrator role at each level — those are the people who can add and remove everyone else.
Open Admin → Access Management (it exists under both the Account and Property columns) and read both lists. Agencies with account-level Administrator on *your* account, departed employees, personal Gmail addresses — all flags.
Scenario A: it's your account, wrong people in it
- 1Add a company-controlled Administrator firstA durable company Google identity — the same rule as everywhere: shared mailbox, not a person's personal account.
- 2Demote or remove the restAgencies get Editor or below, scoped to the property they work on; departed people go entirely.
- 3Check Tag Manager separatelyGTM containers have their own user list — audit it in the same sitting, or your tags stay editable by people you just removed from Analytics.
Scenario B: the property lives in their account
If the agency or developer created the property under their own Analytics account, don't rebuild from zero — Google supports moving a property between accounts, data and all.
- 1Get Editor access or above on the propertyThe move requires Editor+ standing in both the source and destination — set up your own Analytics account as the destination.
- 2Run the move from AdminThe property — settings, data streams, and all reporting data — moves (not copies) to your account.
- 3Choose the permissions option deliberatelyYou'll be asked to either replace the property's permissions with the destination account's, or carry the existing ones over. Replacing is usually right when leaving an agency — then re-grant them what they need.
- 4Do it before the relationship endsThe move needs cooperation from someone with access in their account. This is a week-one item in any agency breakup, not an afterthought.
Set it up properly
- The Analytics account belongs to the business; Administrator lives on a company identity, with a second admin for redundancy.
- Agencies and freelancers get the least role that does their job, at the property level, reviewed when the engagement ends.
- Tag Manager gets the same audit — container access is site-code access.
- Record account, property and container IDs in your asset register so nobody has to archaeology this again.
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