Citation guides
How to Cite a Website: APA, MLA and Harvard Examples
Step-by-step examples for citing a web page in APA 7, MLA 9 and Harvard style, including what to do when there is no author or date.
Websites are the sources students cite most, and the ones style guides make the most confusing. The good news: every style wants the same four ingredients. Find who wrote the page, when it was published, what it is called and where it lives (the site name and URL). Once you have those, the rest is punctuation.
What to collect before you start
- Author: a person if one is named, otherwise the organisation behind the site.
- Date: the publication or last-updated date, not the copyright year in the footer.
- Title of the page: the headline on the page itself, not the browser-tab text.
- Site name and URL: the clean address, without tracking parameters like ?utm_source=…
APA website reference
APA puts the date right after the author and ends with the site name and URL. The page title is in italics. See the APA citation generator for more source types.
APA reference list entry
APA in-text citation
APA: no individual author
Use the organisation as the author. When the organisation and the site name are identical, leave the site name out to avoid repeating it.
APA, organisation as author
APA: no date
Write (n.d.) in place of the year. If the content is likely to change over time, add a retrieval date.
APA, undated and changing content
MLA website reference
MLA puts the page title in quotation marks and the site name in italics, with the date written day-month-year. The MLA citation generator handles the inverted author name for you.
MLA works cited entry
MLA in-text citation
When the page has no publication date, add an access date at the end: Accessed 12 June 2026.
Harvard website reference
Harvard (author-date) always ends a web reference with "Available at:" plus the URL and an accessed date. Universities vary in small details, so check your department guide or use the Harvard reference generator set to your variant.
Harvard reference list entry
Harvard in-text citation
Difficult cases, answered
Web page with no author
Work down a ladder: a named person, then the organisation behind the site, then the page title. Most institutional pages have no byline, and the organisation is the correct author rather than a missing one.
Organisation as author
Web page with no date
APA and Harvard mark it explicitly; MLA leaves the date out and relies on the access date. Do not use the copyright year in the footer, which belongs to the site rather than the page.
Missing date
Web page with no title
Describe the page in square brackets instead of inventing a title.
Described in place of a title
Page that changes over time
Statistics dashboards, live trackers and wiki-style pages are rewritten continuously, which is precisely why the access date matters. If the figure you cite is central to your argument, save a copy or archive the page so you can show what it said when you read it.
Page behind a login
If your reader cannot reach it, it is not a retrievable source. Cite the public version if one exists; otherwise treat it as personal communication in APA, cited in the text only and left out of the reference list.
Social media post
Use the account name as the author, keep the handle, and reproduce the first twenty words or so of the post as its title, including the original spelling.
APA, social media
Blog post
Cite it like a web page, with the blog name where a site name goes. Remember that a blog is self-published, so it carries no editorial review — usable as evidence of an opinion, rarely as evidence of a fact.
Page you found through a search engine's AI summary
Cite the underlying page, never the summary, and open the page to confirm it actually says what the summary claimed. Generated overviews regularly compress two sources into one statement that neither of them makes.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Copying the browser-tab title, which often has the site name bolted on ("… | Sleep Foundation").
- Citing the homepage when you actually used a specific article deeper in the site.
- Using the footer copyright year ("© 2026") as the publication date.
- Pasting URLs full of tracking junk; strip everything from the question mark onwards unless it is needed to reach the page.
- Forgetting the accessed date in Harvard style, which most Swedish and UK universities require.
Written by Ihsan Hossain
Founder of CitApp, a citation tool built to make source formatting effortless for students. Guides on this blog are checked against the current official style guides (APA 7, MLA 9, and university Harvard variants).
Frequently asked questions
Do I always need an access date when citing a website?
No. APA 7 only asks for a retrieval date when the page is designed to change over time, such as a dictionary entry or a social media profile. Harvard style asks for an accessed date on every web source. MLA 9 makes the access date optional but recommends it when the page has no publication date.
How do I cite a whole website rather than one page?
In APA 7 you usually do not add a reference list entry for an entire website. Mention the site by name in your text and give the URL in parentheses. Only individual pages or documents you actually used get full references.
What if the web page has no author at all?
First look for an organisation that can stand as author, such as the WHO or a government agency. If there is genuinely no author, move the title of the page into the author position and alphabetise the reference by title.
Can I cite a page behind a paywall or login?
Yes. Cite it like any other web page with the public URL. Readers may need a subscription to reach it, just as they would for a printed book they do not own. Never paste shortened or tracking URLs; use the clean, canonical address.