I had another SEO company (SEO A) call me and tell me that they understood I had done AdWords for their client (CLIENT B) in the past and they wanted me to send them off the last two years of legacy data for their client as they were taking over their SEO and wanted to know what keywords were working etc. This came as a complete shock to me as I was CURRENTLY doing CLIENT B's adwords. I emailed the CLIENT B's owner and said "Hey I received a call from SEO A , not sure what's happening with your AdWords campaign, please let me know what the plan is going forward." He replies and says that the SEO A is doing their SEO and while they hadn't talked about AdWords they would likely be doing it down the road. I was VERY annoyed at this point. Basically the new SEO company wants to set up MY campaign. Thoughts? There are a few other factors but with that info alone what do you think...should I send SEO A the reports?
I have had the same thing happen to me several times over the years (albeit with PPC not SEO). I always felt that if another agency felt they could do a better job then why would they want my campaigns? If I was taking over PPC from another agency I'd simply start from scratch, although it MIGHT be useful to see some of their data. I looked into the issue of intellectual property, but the fact is that if the client was paying for the campaigns, then THEY own the intellectual rights, not me. My best advice is to download a copy of your dats for your own records, and tell the client that you will leave the door open in case things don't work out with the new agency. Then let it go and move on....