How to Cite a Website (with Examples in APA, MLA & AMA)
How to cite a web page correctly — what details you need, examples in APA, MLA, and AMA, and how to handle a missing author or date.
Websites are the trickiest common source to cite, because the pieces you need are scattered around the page — and sometimes missing entirely. This guide covers what to look for, how a web citation looks in the major styles, and what to do when there's no author or date.
What a website citation needs
- Author — a person or the organisation that published the page
- Title of the specific page (not the whole site)
- Website name — the publisher or brand
- Publication or last-updated date
- URL
- Access date — required by some styles, because web content changes
Paste the page's URL into the citation generator and it will read the page's metadata (title, author, site name, date) automatically, then add today's access date for you.
Examples
APA (7th edition):
World Health Organization. (2023, March 10). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
MLA (9th edition):
World Health Organization. "Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)." WHO, 10 Mar. 2023, www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus.
AMA (11th edition):
- World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Accessed July 14, 2026. https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
Missing author or date? Here's the rule
- No author — start the reference with the page title, then the date. (Only use "Anonymous" if the page literally credits the author that way.)
- No date — use
n.d.("no date") in APA, or omit the year and rely on the access date in styles that require one. - No page title — describe the page in square brackets, e.g. [Home page].
The generator applies these fallbacks automatically, but it's worth knowing why the output looks the way it does.
A note on trustworthy sources
Citing a page is easy; citing a good page is the real skill. Prefer primary sources, official organisations, and dated pages you can point a reader back to. If a page has a DOI (many reports and datasets now do), cite it as you would a journal article — a DOI is far more stable than a raw URL.