How to cite a website in APA

Use the byline shown on the page, formatted as Surname, F. M. If no individual is credited, use the organization or site sponsor as the author: Mayo Clinic. If the same organization is both the listed author and the site, write it once in the author slot and omit the site name field - APA does not repeat identical organizational names. The site's "About" page is not a citable author; use what is actually credited at the top of the page.

Use the publication date shown on the page (Year, Month Day). If only a year appears, use the year alone. Do not use the copyright year from the site footer - that's the year the site was last updated overall, not the date of the specific page. If no date appears anywhere on the page, use (n.d.). When a page shows both an original publication date and a "last updated" date, APA prefers the original publication date unless the content has been substantively revised.

Italicize the title of the webpage and use sentence case - capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. APA 7 treats webpages on websites as stand-alone works, so the title is italicized in the same way a book title would be. APA 6 did not italicize them, which is why older handouts disagree.

Plain text in title case, placed after the title and a period. Do not italicize the site name on a generic webpage - italics on a "site" name signal that the source is actually a periodical (news, magazine, journal, blog) and should be cited using a different template. If the author and the site name are identical, omit the site name to avoid repetition.

The live URL with no "Retrieved from" prefix - that wording was removed in APA 7. Do not break URLs at hyphens you have added, and do not append a final period (the URL ends the reference; no period follows). Hyperlinking the URL or leaving it as plain text is acceptable. Do not shorten URLs through services like bit.ly unless the shortened URL is the canonical address.

Include only if the content is designed to change over time and is not archived - for example, a continuously updated statistics dashboard, a dictionary entry that may be revised, or a social media profile rather than a specific post. Format: Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL. Most webpage citations do not need a retrieval date.