Your contract with the contractor has ended, you said goodbye, and their email is still listed in your advertising account. Access does not disappear on its own: the person stays a user until an administrator removes them. That does not mean they will do anything. But you pay for the advertising, and an outsider with the “admin” level could change its settings, look at your data or lock you out.
Below is a twenty-minute routine: four places to check and two traps worth knowing about before you click “Remove”. We checked the menu names against Google’s help in English on 18 October 2026. Depending on your interface version they may differ slightly.
First, make sure you are an admin yourself
Only an administrator can remove others. Google Ads help says that only the Admin level lets you grant access, change access levels and cancel other people’s invitations. If you are just a user there and the contractor is still the admin, start with a conversation: ask them to make you an admin, and only then remove them.
Second rule: do not touch your own admin access. Google Ads and Tag Manager help both recommend having at least two administrators, so you do not lose access if something happens to one of them. So it is best to have two admins of your own: you and one more person you trust (a co-owner, an accountant, another specialist).
1. Google Ads
Where. In the Admin menu, open “Access and security”. Find the foreign email and, in the “Actions” column, select “Remove access”. That is the path in Google Ads help.
Check manager accounts separately. The contractor could have signed in not only as a user but also through their own manager account: an account from which an agency or freelancer manages several clients’ accounts at once. The same “Access and security” page has a separate “Managers” tab. It also has “Remove access” in the “Actions” column, followed by a confirmation, “Unlink”. If you are not sure whose email or account it is, do not guess: ask the former contractor or compare with the dates they worked for you.
2. Google Analytics
Where. In Analytics, open “Admin”. Under “Account” there is “Account access management”, under “Property” there is “Property access management”. Analytics calls your website with all its settings a property. Find the foreign email and remove it. According to Analytics help, only an account administrator can delete users.
The trap. Permissions are inherited: if the contractor was added at the level of the whole account, those permissions apply in every property, and you cannot remove them at the property level. So look at both levels, but remove at the account level.
3. Google Tag Manager
Where. Tag Manager is a “remote control” through which counters and other tags are added to a site without touching its code. Open “Admin”. Permissions exist at two levels. For the container (the name for your site’s set of tags), select “User Management” in the “Container” column; for the whole account, in the “Account” column. Select the user in the permissions list, click “Remove”, then “Save”. For why all this matters to an owner, see a separate article: what should be connected to your website.
If the list shows only one administrator, Tag Manager help warns that if that person’s access is lost, you may lose access to your tags. So add a second administrator before removing the others.
4. Merchant Center (if you run an online store)
Where. Open “Access and services”, then the “People and access” tab. Next to the person, click “Manage”, and under “Account Status” click “Remove person”.
The most dangerous trap. Before you remove anyone, check that your website URL verification is not associated with that person. Google’s help says it directly: if it is, removing them also removes your verification and claim status, and you will have to verify and claim the website again with another person. If the contractor once verified your site from their own email, your store may drop out of listings. First verify the site from your own email or another trusted one, then remove. We wrote about why Merchant Center matters in the article on nine checks against a ban, and about how we work with it in the Merchant Center section.
Disputed: who has to approve the removal
The sources disagree here, and we do not want to pretend there is one answer.
What Google says. Google Ads help has a feature called multi-party approval. Adding and removing users and changing roles can require approval by another administrator. But the help notes that it applies only to accounts with more than three administrators, and if only one administrator remains, it pauses. An approval request lasts 20 days and then expires. You can see it on the “Security requests” tab under “Access and security”: the second administrator has to go there themselves.
What practitioners say. Opinions differ. Some write that when an account has two or more administrators (you and the former contractor), every access change must be approved by all of them, so a hostile contractor can simply not approve. Others say that since 14 July 2026 removing access always requires a second administrator, and an account with a single administrator gets “stuck”. We did not find official help with such conditions; these are reports from industry channels. Practitioners also mention a seven-day delay for sensitive actions on freshly granted access. That is unofficial too, so we do not rely on it.
What it means for you. How exactly it works in your account right now we cannot say without testing on a live account. So do not leave it to the last day: try to remove, and if the button does not work, look for the request under “Security requests”. If the contractor refuses to approve, contact Google Ads support rather than fighting for the account alone.
What to check after removing
Refresh the users page in each service and make sure the foreign email is gone. In Analytics check both levels: account and property. Then open your Google Ads account and see whether the ads run as before, and in Merchant Center whether a warning about the site has appeared. If something in the settings looks odd after the contractor left, look at the account’s change history: it shows who edited what and when. This is not an accusation, just ordinary hygiene: you simply know what happened in your advertising account.
Separately, think about the contractor’s mailbox as a channel for receiving messages. If notifications from Google (about payment, suspension, recommendations) still go to it, you may not hear about a problem. Open the notification settings and make sure the emails reach you.
How not to end up here again
- Create accounts under your own email and add the contractor as a user. Then, when they leave, you lose nothing.
- Grant the minimum level that is enough for the work. For a one-off audit, view-only is enough.
- Twice a year, open the user lists in the four services and look for unfamiliar emails.
- Before any parting with a contractor, first add your own second administrator, and only then remove.
Summary: five steps
- Make sure you are an admin yourself, and add a second one of your own.
- Google Ads: “Admin” → “Access and security” → “Remove access”, and check manager accounts separately.
- Analytics: “Account access management” and the property one.
- Tag Manager: “User Management” → “Remove” → “Save”.
- Merchant Center: first check the site verification, then “Remove person”.
You can read how we set up advertising in the search advertising and Performance Max sections.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you who has access to it and what is worth fixing.