How to Tell If Your SEO Agency Is Working: What You Can Check Yourself

Every month, the agency’s invoice arrives on the same day. A few days later, the report arrives. It has a chart, a list of keywords, and an upbeat sentence at the end.

You read it, you pay, and you are left with a question that never makes it into the meeting. Are they actually working?

The question sounds like distrust, and that is why it feels uncomfortable. Nobody wants to distrust the people they hired. And nobody wants to pay for a whole year without knowing what for.

There is a way out of that spot without accusing anyone. The big question breaks down into three smaller ones, and you can answer all three yourself. Is the account that holds the data yours? What changed on the site, and on what date? Does the report show a window, a source, what was done, and what changed?

None of them requires a paid tool. They require Search Console, Google Analytics, and one afternoon.

Why it is so hard to tell

Think of a condo building. You pay the HOA fee every month and almost never see the building manager at work. The water pump was replaced overnight. The leak was fixed from inside the wall.

At the annual meeting, the manager can show a spreadsheet he made himself. Or he can show the bank statement, which he cannot edit. Both tell the same story when everything is in order. Only the second one holds up when someone has doubts.

SEO works the same way. Much of the work lives where you never look: the code, the server, the structure of the pages. The effect shows up later, and sometimes it arrives mixed in with your market’s calendar.

The agency’s report is the building manager’s spreadsheet. Search Console and Google Analytics are the bank statement, because Google is the one making the entries. This is called a primary source.

Google itself writes a sentence that raises the stakes of this check: “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire.” ¹ If an agency creates deceptive content on your behalf, your whole site could be removed from Google’s index. ¹ That is why Google recommends knowing exactly how they intend to help.

One caveat before you open the bank statement. It has known flaws too, and the three checks below take them into account.

If your doubt is broader, about whether SEO works for your business at all, it has a piece of its own: does SEO really work? The question here is narrower. Is the work you pay for actually happening?

First check: is the account yours?

Start with Search Console. Open Settings and find the Ownership verification row. That is where Google shows your permission. ²

There are three levels of access to the data. An owner has full control: they add and remove users, configure settings, and view all data. A full user can view all data and take some actions. A restricted user can view most data. ²

A quick test settles it. The Users and permissions page is visible only to owners. ² If it doesn’t open for you, the site is yours and the bank statement sits in someone else’s hands.

Every property needs at least one verified owner. ² The agency can be an owner too, and that is perfectly fine. What matters is that you are on the list, with an email address from your company. An address the agency created in your name is still under its control.

If the account was set up under the agency’s name, you can verify yourself as an owner. Google uses a token placed on the site, such as an HTML file, to prove the site is yours. ²

Then Google Analytics. In Admin, under Account, click Account access management. ⁴ That screen shows who has access, and with which role.

There are five roles: Administrator, Editor, Marketer, Analyst, and Viewer. Only an Administrator manages users, and can grant any role to anyone, including themselves. An Editor controls the property’s settings and cannot manage users. ⁴

Here is the rule that protects you most. To delete users, you need the Administrator role at the account level. And anyone with that permission can delete any other user. ³

The conclusion is mine, drawn from those two pages. At least one account Administrator should be someone from your company. The agency can configure the property as an Editor, with no power to remove anyone. That split applies to any provider, including the ones who do good work.

Second check: what changed on the site, and when?

SEO work leaves a trail with dates on it. Three free screens keep that trail, and none of them depends on the agency’s report.

The job log in Search Console

Think of the job log a general contractor keeps at the house during a remodel. Every day gets a line: what was done, and on which wall. When a crack shows up, the log tells you what changed before it.

The Performance report in Search Console has had that log since November 2025. ⁵ You right-click the chart, pick the date, and type a note of up to 120 characters. ⁶ This is called a custom annotation.

In its announcement, Google lists situations worth annotating. One of them is exactly “hiring an agency.” ⁵ Ask for every change to the site to go on the chart, on the date it happened.

Owners and full users can add and delete annotations. A restricted user can only view them. ⁶ The feature has three limits. Annotations disappear after 500 days, do not show up in comparison mode, and cannot be edited for now. ⁶ Keep a copy of the list in your own files.

There are also system annotations. Search Console itself marks data processing and reporting issues on the chart. ⁶ Before arguing over a step in the curve, look for that marker on the date.

The change history in Analytics

Google Analytics keeps a record of the changes made to the account over the last two years. In Admin, click Account change history or Property change history. ⁷

Each row shows the date and time, the item changed, the action, and who made it. To open that screen, you need the Editor role or higher. ⁷

That is where you find out when the conversion event was created, the event Analytics now calls a key event. In the book, I wrote what to do with that date: that is where your series begins. ¹⁰ A conversion series that starts before it compares something with nothing.

The pages in the index, month by month

The Page indexing report shows how many pages Google has stored. It also shows why the others were left out. The View data about indexed pages link holds the history of that count. ⁸

Google says what to expect from that line. Ideally, it grows gradually as the site grows. A drop or a spike calls for investigation. ⁸ If the agency’s report says it published new pages, check each one in the URL Inspection tool. ⁸

The four doors a page passes through on its way into the index are covered in how to get your site on Google.

Performance, page by page

In the Performance report, switch the table to the Pages tab. It shows the clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and position of each address. ⁹

Choose the Weekly or Monthly granularity. Google explains that it smooths out daily fluctuations, like those caused by weekends or holidays. ⁹ Then take the pages the agency says it worked on. Look at each one before and after the annotated date.

Reading each page takes three questions. How many people arrive, what they do next, and what the page is for. That reading is in the piece on Page Analytics.

Third check: does the report have a window, a source, and a list?

With the bank statement open, the agency’s report takes on a new job. It explains what the statement shows. An honest report answers four questions.

The window

Every number needs a start date and an end date. And one date calls for special care.

For the book, I measured five unrelated sites. Four showed the same step change between April 20 and 21, 2026. Impressions fell between 24% and 58% in a single week, and clicks did not move. ¹⁰

This is called a series break. Impressions and average position can only be compared when both windows sit on the same side of that date. Clicks cross it without a step. ¹⁰ A report comparing March with July 2026 by impressions may be showing a defect in the dashboard. The rest of that reading is in why organic traffic dropped.

The source

The Search Console queries list shows only part of a site’s clicks. On the four sites I measured for the book, from May to July 2026, it covered between a quarter and two-fifths. ¹⁰

On SEO Genome’s own site, from June to August 2026, it covered 177 of 335 clicks, or 52.8%. ¹¹ The pages list covers everything. ¹⁰ A keyword report with no coverage stated shows a slice dressed up as the whole pie.

What was done

The list of changes needs a date and a page. Google is direct on one point: “If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.” ¹

Each item on the list should have an annotation on the chart, on the same date. When the two match, you see the work and the curve on the same screen.

What changed

This is where conversion comes in, and with it the finding that bothered me most in 2026. In a data pull on August 2, 2026, I went through my entire client portfolio. For 15 of 25 clients with meaningful traffic from AI assistants, conversion from that traffic could not be measured. ¹⁰

Those clients’ accounts were not measuring conversion. The conversion event never fired, or it was a generic event, such as a page view. ¹⁰

Check your own account. In Admin, under Data display, click Events and see which ones are marked as key events. ¹² Write down the volume of each over the last 90 days. A volume of zero means a metric that never fires. Page views, clicks, scrolls, and item views fire on their own, without anyone deciding anything. ¹⁰

It is not always someone’s carelessness. With Google Ads linked and Ads Personalization turned on, Analytics marks some events as key events by itself. They include session_start and view_item. ¹² An honest report tells you when the conversion is measuring something else.

One section is still missing, and it separates a diagnosis from a sales pitch. It is the list of what could not be known. It closes out the full order of exams in the SEO audit.

The warning signs Google describes

Google’s page for people hiring an SEO includes a list of warning signs. ¹ Each one describes behavior, and behavior can be checked.

The first sign is the most common and the easiest to resolve. Google tells you to ask for explanations whenever something is unclear. ¹ An agency that works well answers with a date and a page. Reluctance to show the list also answers your question.

One sign looks like a warning and sometimes isn’t: a traffic drop during the contract. It may come from the measurement, the calendar, or demand. The order for separating those causes is in the piece on drops, linked above.

What to do with the three answers

If all three checks passed, you have the bank statement in hand. The next meeting can be about what comes next, and suspicion leaves the table.

If any of them failed, take the sheet to the agency before you decide anything. In the book, I wrote that many measurement flaws come from a rushed setup, with no bad faith from anyone. ¹⁰ Ask for an Administrator from your company in Analytics, an annotation for each change, and a report with a window and a source.

When that conversation doesn’t settle it, the next question is a different one. Is it worth hiring again, and what should you demand from whoever comes next? It has a piece of its own, on hiring SEO again.

A note on who is writing. SEO Genome is an SEO consulting firm, and the three checks apply to us in exactly the same way.

From now on, when the monthly report arrives, you will look for four things before the chart. The window, the source, the list of what was done, and what changed. If one is missing, the question for the next meeting is already written.

Open Search Console today. In Settings, read the Ownership verification row and write down on a sheet of paper the permission you see there.