How to Cite a Website in APA 7th Edition
The APA 7th edition format for a website citation follows one reliable template: author, date, page title in italics, site name in plain text, and URL. Getting those five fields in the right order, with correct capitalization and italics, takes under two minutes once you know the rules. What trips most students up is not the overall structure but the details: which title gets italics, when to use “n.d.” instead of a year, and what to do when the author is an organization rather than a person. This guide walks every field with examples you can copy directly, drawn from the official APA Style guidance at apastyle.apa.org.
What Is the APA 7th Edition Format for a Website?
The APA 7th edition website citation format is: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the specific page. Name of the Website. URL.
That template handles the large majority of citations students need. The fields shift slightly for edge cases (no author, no date), but the skeleton stays the same. Before the edge cases, each field deserves a close look.
The Reference-List Entry, Field by Field
| Field | Format rule | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Surname, Initial(s). For groups, write the full organization name. | Chen, M. L. or World Health Organization |
| Date | Year, Month Day in parentheses. Use n.d. if no date. | (2024, March 15) or (n.d.) |
| Page title | Sentence case. Italicize. Capitalize only first word + proper nouns. | How vaccines work in the body |
| Site name | Title case. Plain text (no italics). Omit if it matches the author. | BBC Science Focus |
| URL | Full URL, no period at end, no angle brackets. | https://www.example.com/page |
The five fields in an APA 7th edition website reference, with formatting rules for each.
Two points stand out in that table. First, the page title gets italics but the site name does not. Students frequently reverse this. Second, the page title uses sentence case (first word capitalized, everything else lowercase unless it is a proper noun), while the site name keeps title case. These two rules cover the majority of formatting errors on website citations.
The In-Text Citation
In-text citations for websites follow the same (Author, Year) pattern as any other APA source. For a paraphrase: (Chen, 2024). For a direct quote, APA 7th edition asks you to include a locator so the reader can find the exact passage. Web pages rarely have page numbers, so use a paragraph number instead: (Chen, 2024, para. 3). If the page has visible headings but no numbers, use the heading name and a paragraph count under it: (Chen, 2024, How vaccines work section, para. 2).
Most web pages do not have page numbers. Use “para. N” for the paragraph number when quoting directly. Count from the first full paragraph on the page. If the paragraph structure is ambiguous, cite the nearest section heading in quotation marks followed by the paragraph count within that section. This satisfies APA 7th edition's requirement for a precise locator on direct quotes.
Worked Examples: APA Website Citations
The format becomes concrete fastest with real examples. The two cases below cover the most common scenarios students face.
Standard Web Article with Named Author
A news article or blog post with a named author is the simplest case:
In-text (paraphrase): (Martinez, 2025)
In-text (direct quote): (Martinez, 2025, para. 4)
Organization or Government Site as Author
When a government body or organization publishes the page, the group name takes the author slot. If the group name also appears as the site name, omit the site name to avoid repetition:
The site name (who.int / World Health Organization) matches the author, so APA 7th edition says to omit it. The in-text citation becomes: (World Health Organization, 2024). On second reference in the same document, you may use the abbreviation WHO if you introduce it in the first citation: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2024), then (WHO, 2024) thereafter.
How to Handle Missing Information
Real web pages rarely offer all five fields. APA 7th edition has a clear answer for each common gap, and knowing the rules in advance saves significant time at the reference-list stage. The full rules appear in Chapter 10 of the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition.
No Author Listed
Check the page carefully before concluding there is no author. Bylines sometimes appear at the bottom of articles, inside author cards, or on a linked “About” section. If no individual author exists, look for an organizational author such as a company, charity, or government department.
If the page genuinely has no author, APA 7th edition moves the page title to the author position. The title does not get italicized in this slot; save the italics for when the title sits in the normal title field. In-text, cite the first few words of the title in quotation marks: (“How vaccines work,” 2024).
In-text: (“How vaccines work,” 2024)
No Publication Date
Replace the year with n.d.(no date, no period after the d, then a period closes the parentheses): (n.d.). The in-text citation follows suit: (World Health Organization, n.d.) or (“Title of page,” n.d.).
No Page Title
When a page has no title (rare, but possible for data tables or dashboard pages), substitute a brief bracketed description in plain text: [Description of the page content]. The brackets signal to readers that this is your description, not a formal title.
When to Add a Retrieval Date
APA 7th edition dropped the mandatory retrieval date that earlier editions required. You now add one only when the content changes over time and the site does not archive earlier versions. Wikis and institutional dashboards that update without preserving history need a retrieval date. Published news articles, government reports, and academic organization pages typically do not.
Format: Retrieved [Month Day, Year], from [URL]. The comma after the year and the word “from” before the URL are both required when a retrieval date appears.
Many citation guides written before 2020 still show retrieval dates on every website citation. APA 7th edition (2020) removed the requirement for stable content. Adding a retrieval date to a news article or government report is not technically wrong, but it is unnecessary and marks your reference list as working from outdated guidance. Check that your institution or journal has not imposed its own style rule before omitting the date entirely.
The Most Common APA Website Citation Mistakes
Three errors account for most of the deductions students receive on reference-list formatting for web sources.
Italics, Capitalization, and Punctuation Rules
| Error | What students write | What APA requires |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong title italicized | BBC Science Focus (italic) not the page title | Page title in italic; site name in plain text |
| Title case on page title | How Vaccines Work In The Body | Sentence case: How vaccines work in the body |
| Period after URL | https://www.example.com/page. | No period after URL |
| Missing site name | Chen, M. (2024). Title. https://... | Site name goes between title and URL |
| Author initials wrong order | M. L. Chen | Chen, M. L. (surname first) |
| n.d. punctuation | n.d or nd or N.D. | n.d. exactly (lowercase, period after d) |
The six most common formatting errors in APA website citations and their corrections.
URLs: What to Include and What to Cut
Paste the full, working URL exactly as it appears in your browser. APA 7th edition does not wrap URLs in angle brackets, does not shorten them, and does not end them with a period. If the URL already ends your reference entry, leave no punctuation after it.
One exception: if a DOI exists for a web article (this happens for preprints and some online-only journal articles), use the DOI formatted as a hyperlink (https://doi.org/xxxxx) instead of the landing-page URL. DOIs are preferred when available because they remain stable even if the hosting site changes. For ordinary web pages, which have no DOI, the URL is the correct identifier.
Citing Multiple Pages From the Same Site
Each page on a website gets its own separate reference-list entry. There is no APA shorthand that lets you cite a site once and then reference subpages without repeating the author and date. If you cite three articles from the same news outlet by different authors, you write three full entries. If you cite three pages from the same government agency, you write three full entries, each differentiated by page title and URL.
Two situations come up often. First, when the same author publishes multiple articles in the same year on the same site, you distinguish them by adding a letter suffix to the year: (Chen, 2024a) and (Chen, 2024b). Order the entries alphabetically by title in the reference list. Second, when you paraphrase broadly from an entire website rather than a specific page (for example, citing the general mission of an organization), you may cite the site's home page, but APA's guidance at apastyle.apa.org recommends citing specific pages wherever possible because they are more traceable.
For the actual formatting work, the citations hub at University Resources offers a generator that handles all the APA 7th edition rules covered here, including edge cases. It applies the correct italics, sentence case, and punctuation automatically.
APA Citation Generator
Format any web page, journal article, book, or report in APA 7th edition automatically. The generator applies italics, sentence case, and punctuation rules for you.
If you are also citing books or journal articles in the same paper, the APA book citation guide and the APA journal article citation guide cover those source types with the same field-by-field approach. All three formats share the same author and date conventions described here; the differences are in the title treatment and the publication identifiers.
For other referencing styles your institution may require, the full collection of citation tools and guides sits in the University Resources hub. The APA YouTube citation guide and the APA PDF citation guide are particularly useful for research papers that draw on multimedia and document sources alongside websites.
Key Takeaways
- The APA 7th edition website citation format is: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page. Site Name. URL. That order is fixed.
- The page title is italicized and written in sentence case. The site name is in plain text and title case. Reversing these two is the single most common error.
- No author? Use the organization name. Still no author? Move the page title to the author slot. No date? Write n.d. in place of the year.
- Retrieval dates are not required for stable content in APA 7th edition. Add one only for wikis and pages that update without archiving previous versions.
- URLs require no angle brackets, no trailing period, and no “Retrieved from” phrase unless a retrieval date is also present.
- In-text citations follow the same (Author, Year) pattern as any APA source. Direct quotes from web pages need a paragraph locator: (Author, Year, para. N).
- Every page you cite gets its own full reference entry. There is no shorthand for multiple pages from the same site.
