What Records Should I Collect Before Changing AEO Agencies?

What does a useful handover need to accomplish?

Scottish public-procurement guidance includes continuity and documentation transfer in exit planning. This is a planning example, not a statement of US private-contract rights. The following questions are our recommendations for applying that limited premise to this business decision.

A useful handover lets the next responsible person understand the work without pretending that every past decision was correct. Ask for the current public pages, accepted versions, outstanding tasks, reporting definitions, and named contacts. Collect these as an inventory of what exists and what is missing. A folder containing many files is not the same as a usable record of the engagement. The recipient should be able to connect each important item to a business purpose.

This guide addresses receipt and usability of records. It does not decide whether you should replace an agency, what intellectual property you own, or how to transfer credentials. Those questions depend on your agreement, account arrangements, and appropriate professional advice. For a property management business changing providers, the immediate content question is practical: can the new provider tell which leasing descriptions are approved, which pages are public, and which claims still need the business owner's confirmation?

Evidence: exit-premise

Which inventory should you ask the outgoing provider to prepare?

Our recommendation: Ask for a list organized by deliverable rather than by the agency's internal department names. For each item, identify its customer-facing purpose, current status, location, latest accepted version, and responsible contact. Distinguish a published page from a draft, a proposal from accepted work, and an archived report from a current dashboard. If a document describes planned work, it should not be labeled as completed simply because the document itself exists.

Request an explanation for missing items instead of assuming misconduct. The record may be in another system, may never have been part of the engagement, or may depend on a decision the business has not made. Capture the explanation and the person who can resolve it. If the parties disagree about entitlement to an item, keep that disagreement separate from the technical question of whether a supplied file can be opened and understood. Avoid making legal conclusions from an incomplete folder.

Evidence: exit-premise

How do you match content files to public pages?

Our recommendation: For each important page, ask for its public URL and the version that the business accepted. Open the page and compare its main service facts, offer, qualifications, and contact route with that version. A file name such as final does not establish that its contents match the current website. The public page may have received a later correction, or the file may be a proposal that was never published. Record the difference without overwriting either version.

Start with pages customers use to make consequential decisions. A leasing-service page with the wrong eligibility description deserves attention before a minor formatting difference in an old article. Note redirects or removed pages as observations, not instructions to change them immediately. The purpose of the inventory is continuity. A hurried attempt to make every address resemble a spreadsheet can break useful customer paths or erase evidence of what the previous provider actually delivered.

Evidence: hiring-premise

What should remain attached to a claim or customer example?

Our recommendation: Ask for the source and review notes supporting material claims you intend to keep using. A statistic needs its period and scope. A customer example needs the business's record of what was authorized for public use. An award description needs enough detail to identify what was awarded and when. Do not assume that a citation copied into an article supplies every permission or factual qualification necessary to reuse the surrounding story.

When support is missing, mark the claim for review rather than replacing it with another impressive statement. A new provider should not inherit an unsupported promise as a requirement to preserve the old wording. Consider a hypothetical maintenance company whose article describes a response time that operations no longer supports. The handover should flag the promise and name its fact owner. Whether and how to correct the public page is a separate, documented decision made with current business knowledge.

Evidence: claims-premise

Which reporting definitions should travel with the numbers?

Our recommendation: Collect the reporting period, source, metric definitions, filters, and important exclusions alongside the report. A chart without these details can be difficult to interpret even if every plotted value is accurate. Ask whether a number represents a website visit, a search impression, an inquiry, or a manually observed answer. Preserve the distinction. The next provider should not have to guess what the former team meant by visibility or results.

For Search Console material, Google documents the report’s selectable period and dimensions. We recommend keeping those settings visible with the saved result. Do not combine historical charts into a new total merely because they share a label. If a comparison cannot be reconstructed, record the limitation and ask the next provider which available record can still inform its work. Keep any broader customer-acquisition question separate until the business has suitable evidence for it.

Evidence: reports-premise

How should unfinished work be recorded?

Our recommendation: An open-work list should say what remains, why it remains, who must act next, and what would count as completion. Separate work awaiting business facts from work awaiting an agency correction. Distinguish optional recommendations from commitments already accepted. If a page is paused because an example lacks permission, the next provider should see that hold before treating the draft as ready to publish. A status label without an explanation is easy to misread.

Ask the outgoing and incoming parties to identify dependencies in ordinary language. For example, a service comparison might need the owner's decision about excluded services before the writer can finish. The dependency is that factual decision, not a vague need for optimization. Avoid using the handover to silently expand the project. Any new deliverable, fee, or deadline should be discussed on its own terms. An unresolved task does not automatically authorize the next provider to rebuild everything.

Evidence: exit-premise

How can you check that the receiving team can use the records?

Our recommendation: Choose a few representative items and ask the receiving person to explain what each contains, which version is current, and what action it supports. This is a practical usability check. It can expose a report with missing definitions, a page whose source is unclear, or a draft whose unresolved comments were omitted. It does not require sending passwords in an email or granting every recipient broad access to unrelated business systems.

For a property manager, a useful example could be the approved explanation of tenant placement services. The receiving team should identify the accepted text, the live page, the factual approver, and any outstanding correction. If they cannot, ask for the missing relationship between the records. Do not equate a successful file download with an effective handover. The point is to preserve understanding and accountability, not simply to move a large collection of documents.

Evidence: exit-premise

What information should stay outside the general handover folder?

Our recommendation: Do not treat the handover as an invitation to gather every customer record the agency encountered. Keep the inventory focused on the work and the public business facts needed to understand it. Sensitive customer, patient, legal, or account information requires a separate purpose and an appropriate authorized process. The fact that a document was available to one provider does not by itself decide whether another party should receive it.

If a report contains private detail, ask whether a limited version can answer the handover question. Ask the responsible person to assess the actual material and proposed use. Do not invent an assurance that a document is anonymous or compliant. Involve the business's responsible privacy or security adviser when necessary. This guide recommends keeping the work inventory useful and appropriately limited; it does not determine legal access rights, retention duties, or disclosure permissions for your organization.

Evidence: privacy-premise

What should the handover acceptance note say?

Our recommendation: Record what was received, what was checked, and what remains unresolved. An acceptance note can acknowledge receipt of a usable report without endorsing every conclusion in it. It can confirm that a public page matches an approved copy while noting that a particular claim still needs current support. Use these distinctions to prevent a routine handover acknowledgment from being mistaken for a waiver, final account settlement, or approval of new work.

Where the relationship involves contractual acceptance, payment, or a dispute, use the agreement and qualified advice. Operational notes should accurately describe the checks performed. Avoid blanket statements such as everything transferred when some records were only listed or promised. A precise exception list protects continuity: the incoming provider can start with the usable material, the business knows which decisions remain, and neither side has to rediscover the same missing information during the next reporting cycle.

Evidence: exit-premise

How do you start the next engagement without losing the history?

Our recommendation: Ask the incoming provider to identify what it proposes to keep, verify, correct, or replace. Require a reason tied to the customer problem or a documented defect. Existing work should not be discarded solely because it came from another agency. Equally, historical approval is not a reason to repeat a current inaccuracy. Preserve the old version and the explanation for the new decision so the business can trace the change later.

Use the inventory to set a manageable first review. Prioritize customer-facing errors, unresolved permissions, and important reporting gaps. Keep optional redesign ideas outside that initial list until they have been discussed. A strong handover does not guarantee better AI visibility or customer acquisition. It gives the business and its next provider a clearer starting point, with fewer assumptions about what was delivered, what was accepted, and what still needs a decision.

Evidence: exit-premise

How can the receiving person check the handover?

1. Locate a representative record

   Ask the receiving person to find the current page or document from the inventory without relying on the outgoing provider’s memory. Record an inaccessible location or unclear version as a specific open question.

2. Explain its purpose

   Have the recipient describe which customer question or business task the item addresses. If the report’s period or a page’s accepted wording is unclear, identify the missing context before drawing a new conclusion.

3. Name the next action

   Write down which item can support the next authorized work and which still needs clarification. Assign a contact for each unresolved question. This usability check does not settle ownership, payment or disclosure rights.

Evidence: exit-premise

Our recommended sequence applies the documentation-transfer planning example to an ordinary owner review. Test useful samples instead of treating the number of files as proof that the transition is complete.