How to Cite a Website

A website citation generally needs five pieces of information: the author (a person or an organization), the page title, the site name, the publication or last-updated date, and the URL. Not every page has all five; use what's actually available rather than guessing at a missing author or date.

This is for students and researchers citing an online source in an academic paper, and for anyone unsure which style to use or what to do when a webpage is missing one of the usual pieces of citation information.

Finding the information

• Author: often listed under a byline, or attributed to the organization running the site if no individual is named.
• Title: the page or article title, usually the largest heading on the page, distinct from the browser tab title in some cases.
• Site name: the name of the website itself, which may differ from the page title and from the organization named as author.
• Date: look for a publish date or "last updated" note, often near the top or bottom of the article; some pages only show a date in the page's underlying code (visible via "view page source") if it's not displayed to readers.
• URL: the full web address, copied directly from the address bar rather than retyped, to avoid a small transcription error.

How the format changes by style

APA puts the date in parentheses right after the author and skips the site name if it matches the author. MLA puts the title in quotation marks and lists the site name in italics. Chicago's notes-bibliography style adds an access date before the URL, since Chicago assumes web content can change or disappear in a way print sources typically don't. These aren't arbitrary style choices; each reflects what that discipline's readers most need to verify quickly, publication currency in APA's social sciences focus, exact wording location in MLA's literary focus, and documentary permanence in Chicago's historical focus.

When there's no listed author

If no individual or organizational author is given, most styles let you start the citation with the title instead, and alphabetize it by title in your reference list. Don't invent an author name to fill the field; an accurate citation that starts with the title is correct, while a guessed author name is a citation error that's harder to catch during a check than a missing field.

When to include an access date

Chicago's notes-bibliography style generally expects an access date for online sources without a clear publication or revision date. APA and MLA typically don't require one unless the source is likely to change (a wiki page, a live dataset, a social media post) or your instructor specifically asks for it. When in doubt, recording the access date costs nothing and can only help if a source becomes unavailable later.

Common mistakes

• Citing the browser tab title instead of the actual page title, which can differ from what's shown as an H1 on the page.
• Leaving off the site name entirely, when only the author's name matched and other required pieces (like the publication) are still missing.
• Copying a URL that includes tracking parameters (long strings after a "?" in the address) rather than the clean page URL.
• Mixing citation styles within the same reference list, often from pasting entries generated by different tools.

Build a website citation in any of 14 styles with the citation generator.