How to Cite a Website in APA 7th Edition: Complete Guide with Examples

Websites are the most commonly cited source type in student writing today -- and also the most commonly miscited. APA 7th edition simplified the rules compared to APA 6, but a handful of edge cases still trip students up: missing authors, missing dates, social media posts, pages that keep getting updated, and the question of whether to cite the page or the whole site.

This guide walks through every variation you are likely to encounter, with complete worked examples for both the reference list entry and the in-text citation.

APA 7 Website Citation Fundamentals

APA 7th edition, published in 2019 and updated through 2024, treats web pages as a first-class source type. The basic reference entry has four components:

1. Author -- who is responsible for the content
2. Date -- when the content was published or last updated
3. Title -- the title of the specific page
4. Source -- the website name and URL

The order is always: Author. (Date). Title of page. Website Name. URL

If you have written papers in APA 6, a few things have changed:

• The "Retrieved from" label before URLs is no longer required
• DOIs and URLs are formatted as hyperlinks
• Up to 20 authors are listed in the reference entry (was 7)
• The publisher location is no longer included

For a deeper treatment of general APA rules including headings, page layout, and reference list formatting, see our complete guide to APA 7th edition.

The Basic Format for a Web Page

The standard reference entry for a web page with a named author, date, title, and website name looks like this:

Chen, L. (2024, June 12). How the arctic feedback loop accelerates warming. Climate Today. https://www.example-climate-today.org/arctic-feedback-2024

And the in-text citation:

Recent modeling suggests the arctic feedback loop contributes more than previously estimated (Chen, 2024).

A few details worth noting:

• The author's last name comes first, followed by initials (no full first names)
• The date includes year, month, and day when available. If only the year is provided, use just the year
• The title of the specific page is in italics and in sentence case (only the first word and proper nouns capitalized)
• The website name comes after the title in plain text, title case
• The URL goes at the end with no period after it

When the website name and the author are the same (as often happens with organizational pages), omit the website name to avoid redundancy:

World Health Organization. (2023, April 2). Mental health and climate change: Policy brief. https://www.who.int/publications/mental-health-climate-brief

Author Variations

Real-world web pages rarely fit the clean "one named human author" model. Here are the variations you will encounter.

Individual author

The simplest case -- a named human being wrote the piece.

Okafor, D. (2024, November 8). Five misconceptions about peer review. Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.example.org/peer-review-misconceptions

In-text: (Okafor, 2024)

Group or organizational author

When a company, government agency, or nonprofit is credited as the author, use the full organization name. Do not abbreviate in the reference list, though you may abbreviate in-text after the first mention.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024, March 15). Influenza surveillance report. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

First in-text citation: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024) Subsequent citations: (CDC, 2024)

Multiple authors

For two authors, use an ampersand in the reference entry and in-text parenthetical:

Kim, S., & Taylor, R. (2024, August 3). Why citation managers matter for reproducibility. Open Science Blog. https://www.openscience.example.org/citation-managers-reproducibility

In-text: (Kim & Taylor, 2024)

For three or more authors, list all authors in the reference entry (up to 20) and use "et al." in-text from the first citation:

Navarro, M., Singh, A., & Patel, R. (2023, July 21). Evaluating AI-assisted literature reviews. Research Methods Journal. https://www.researchmethods.example.com/ai-lit-review

In-text: (Navarro et al., 2023)

No author

If the page has no identifiable author (human or organizational), move the title to the author position.

Understanding your library's interlibrary loan policy. (2024, September). Academic Library Guide. https://www.liboguide.example.edu/ill-policy

In-text: (Understanding your library's interlibrary loan policy, 2024)

For in-text citations, use the first few words of the title. Italicize titles of standalone works (whole sites, books, reports) and use quotation marks around article-style titles.

Date Variations

Dates on web pages can be missing, ambiguous, or frequently updated.

Date not provided

Use "n.d." (no date) in place of the year in both the reference entry and in-text citation.

Harper, B. (n.d.). A guide to reading scientific papers. ScholarPath. https://scholarpath.example.org/reading-papers

In-text: (Harper, n.d.)

Content that is updated

Many websites show a "last updated" date. Use the most recent update date in your reference. Be especially careful with sources that change frequently -- you may need to include a retrieval date.

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, October 9). Academic integrity. In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity

Retrieval dates are required when:

• The content is designed to change (dictionary entries, wiki articles, streaming data)
• There is no archived version

For most news articles, blog posts, and static informational pages, you do not need a retrieval date.

Year only

If only the year is provided, use just the year:

Delgado, R. (2022). Five steps to a successful thesis defense. Graduate Writing Center. https://www.gradwriting.example.edu/defense-prep

In-text: (Delgado, 2022)

Quoting vs. Paraphrasing a Website

Web pages often lack traditional page numbers, which complicates direct quotations. APA 7 offers several location markers.

Paraphrasing

When you paraphrase, you do not need a location marker -- just author and year:

Research on attention during online learning suggests that students' retention drops substantially after 20 minutes of continuous video (Chen, 2024).

Direct quoting

For direct quotes, include a location marker:

• Paragraph number: (Chen, 2024, para. 4)
• Section heading: (Chen, 2024, "Retention and Breaks" section)
• Combination: (Chen, 2024, "Methods" section, para. 2)

If a page is short, you can count paragraphs manually. Do not use "p. 1" for web pages -- that is specific to printed page numbers.

Example:

Chen (2024) argued that "the cliff in attention after 20 minutes is consistent across age groups and subject areas, with only minor variation by content format" (para. 4).

Block quotes

Quotes of 40 or more words become block quotes: indented, no quotation marks, with the citation after the final period.

Citing a Specific Page vs. the Whole Website

Most of the time you cite a specific page, not the whole website. A whole-website reference is appropriate only when you are referring to the site as a general resource without drawing on any particular piece of content.

Whole-website reference (rare)

When you genuinely mean to point at a full website without any specific page in mind, APA 7 recommends mentioning the site in the text with its URL in parentheses. You do not include an entry in the reference list:

The data is available through OpenAlex (https://openalex.org).

Specific page reference (common)

Virtually every student citation of a website should point to a specific page and include a reference list entry. If you are describing OpenAlex's coverage, for example, you should cite the specific "About" or "Data" page you consulted, not the homepage.

Citing Social Media, YouTube, and Blogs

These source types have their own subtleties.

Twitter/X posts

Use the author's real name (last name, initials) and the handle in brackets. Preserve capitalization and spelling from the post, and include hashtags, links, or emoji as they appear.

Fauci, A. [@AnthonyFauci]. (2024, February 3). New data on the long-term outcomes of mRNA vaccines is exactly what public health needed [Post]. X. https://x.com/AnthonyFauci/status/1234567890123456789

In-text: (Fauci, 2024)

If the author's real name is unknown, use the handle as the author:

@OpenAlexOrg. (2024, May 15). Thanks to our contributors, OpenAlex now indexes over 250 million works [Post]. X.

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook

Follow the same pattern as Twitter/X, adjusting the source name and post type. Use [Photograph], [Video], or [Status update] in brackets after the post text (limit to 20 words for the "title" portion).

National Park Service [@nationalparkservice]. (2024, July 4). Yellowstone's bison population reached 5,400 this summer, the highest in 20 years [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/example

YouTube videos

Use the uploader as the author. The video title goes in italics, with [Video] after it.

MITOpenCourseWare. (2023, October 11). Lecture 5: Neural network backpropagation explained [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example

In-text: (MITOpenCourseWare, 2023)

If you are citing a specific moment in the video, include a timestamp in the in-text citation:

MITOpenCourseWare (2023) derived the chain rule from scratch (0:18:42).

For more specialized multimedia citations, see our guide on citing YouTube videos across styles.

Blog posts

Blog posts are treated like articles on a website. Italicize the post title in sentence case, and list the blog name in title case without italics.

Ramirez, P. (2024, September 1). Why your literature review has a structure problem. Academic Writing Weekly. https://www.academicwriting.example.org/lit-review-structure

In-text: (Ramirez, 2024)

Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

These errors show up repeatedly in student papers.

Mistake 1: Citing the homepage instead of the specific page

If you found a statistic on the CDC's influenza surveillance page, do not cite cdc.gov -- cite the specific surveillance page. The URL should lead a reader directly to the content you used.

Mistake 2: Leaving the URL as a hyperlink in print submissions

In digital submissions, live hyperlinks are fine. In printed manuscripts or double-blind submissions, remove the underline and color formatting.

Mistake 3: Using "Retrieved from" before every URL

That was APA 6. In APA 7, you only use "Retrieved from [date]" when a retrieval date is required. Otherwise just put the URL at the end with no label.

Mistake 4: Capitalizing every word of the page title

Page titles use sentence case in the reference entry: only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon are capitalized. The website name uses title case.

Wrong: How The Arctic Feedback Loop Accelerates Warming. Climate Today. Right: How the arctic feedback loop accelerates warming. Climate Today.

Mistake 5: Forgetting to verify the author

On many websites, the "author" that appears in a byline is an editor or a fictional content persona. Check the page itself and the "About" section. If you cannot confirm a human author, check whether the organization is the appropriate author, or treat the source as having no author.

Mistake 6: Citing a source you did not actually read

If you saw a study cited on a blog and cited it in your paper without reading the study itself, you are citing a source you never accessed. Find the original source and cite it directly, or use a secondary citation with "as cited in" -- which should be a last resort.

Mistake 7: Mismatching the in-text author with the reference entry

Whatever goes at the start of the reference entry is the in-text author. If the reference starts with a title (because there is no author), the in-text citation uses a shortened title, not the phrase "Anonymous" or "No author."

Getting Website Citations Right Without the Headache

Manually formatting a reference list of 30 websites, each with its own author and date quirks, is tedious and error-prone. A well-maintained citation generator -- like the one built into CiteDash's free APA citation generator -- handles the formatting automatically and catches common errors like missing dates or incorrect capitalization.

If you are working on a longer paper with many sources of different types, our general-purpose citation generator supports APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, and Harvard, letting you switch styles without rebuilding your reference list from scratch. That said: always double-check every generated citation. Even good tools miss edge cases -- an author spelled unusually, a date in a non-standard location, a page title that is an image rather than text. The final responsibility for accuracy rests with you.

A Final Checklist

Before submitting a paper with web sources, run through this checklist:

1. Does every in-text citation have a matching reference list entry?
2. Does every reference list entry have at least one in-text citation?
3. Are authors listed Last, Initials. with no full first names?
4. Is the date complete (year, month, day) where available?
5. Is the page title in sentence case and italics?
6. Is the website name in title case, plain text?
7. Does each URL lead to the specific page you cited?
8. Are retrieval dates included only for pages that change over time?
9. Have you replaced "Anonymous" or "No author" with the moved-up title?
10. Have you verified that every source actually says what you claim it says?

APA 7 website citations are more forgiving than the dense formatting rules of journal articles, but they still reward attention to detail. A reader who encounters a clean, consistent reference list trusts your scholarship more than one cluttered with broken URLs and mismatched in-text citations. That trust compounds over your academic career.