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The APA format for citing a website is:
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of work. Site Name. URL
Examples
Karlsson, E. (2022, August 4). What rural broadband data actually shows. Rural Policy Institute. https://www.ruralpolicy.org/broadband-data
Standard case - individual author, full publication date, organizational website. The site name is plain text because the source is a webpage, not a news outlet or magazine.
Other APA source types
Switch citation style
APA citation fields explained
| Author | Use the byline shown on the page, formatted as |
| Date | 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 |
| Title | 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. |
| Site Name | 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. |
| URL | 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. |
| Retrieval date (when needed) | 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: |
Examples of website citations in APA
Karlsson, E. (2022, August 4). What rural broadband data actually shows. Rural Policy Institute. https://www.ruralpolicy.org/broadband-data
Standard case - individual author, full publication date, organizational website. The site name is plain text because the source is a webpage, not a news outlet or magazine.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, June 12). Tickborne diseases of the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/diseases
Because the listed author and the site name are the same, the site name is omitted to avoid repetition. The URL follows the title directly.
The history of standardized testing in U.S. public schools. (2020, October). Education Reform Institute. https://www.edreform.org/history-testing
With no individual or organizational author identifiable, the title moves to the author position, retains its italics, and is followed by the date in parentheses. Do not list "Anonymous" unless the page itself credits the work to "Anonymous."
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Hermeneutic. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hermeneutic
Dictionary entries are designed to be updated, so a retrieval date is required. The date in the year slot is n.d. because the entry itself does not carry a fixed publication date. The entry word is in plain text and the dictionary name is italicized.
Ndiaye, A. (2023, November 9). City council weighs new zoning rules near transit. The Atlanta Tribune. https://www.atlantatribune.com/zoning-rules
This is a news article on a news website. The article title is plain text and the news outlet name is italicized - the opposite italicization from a generic webpage. Cite news pieces using the news article template, not the webpage template.
APA edge cases for Website
Tricky citations don't have to be tricky. Pick a scenario to see the rule and a worked example.
If you are referring to a website as a whole rather than to specific content on it, APA does not require a reference list entry. Mention it parenthetically in the text with the URL: "More information is available on the U.S. Census Bureau website (https://www.census.gov)." A reference list entry is needed only when you draw on specific content from a specific page.
Online news articles use the news article template, not the webpage template. The article title is in plain text, and the news outlet name is italicized - inverted from a webpage. Use: Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. News Outlet Name. URL. Misclassifying news as webpages is the most common formatting error on this kind of source, and it changes which words get italicized.
Blog posts use a periodical-style template: post title in plain text, blog name italicized. Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of post. Blog Name. URL. Treat the post as if it were an article in a periodical, not a stand-alone webpage. The same rule applies to most Substack and Medium posts.
Move the title to the author position and use (n.d.) for the date: Title of work. (n.d.). Site Name. URL. The in-text citation uses a shortened italicized title with n.d.: (Shortened Title, n.d.). Two missing fields do not require any extra notation - apply both substitutions in their respective slots.
Cite the archived version of the Wikipedia page rather than the live page. Use the "View history" tab to find a permanent link (an oldid URL) for the specific revision you consulted. Format: Title of entry. (Year, Month Day). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=.... Citing a live Wikipedia URL without the archived revision is incorrect because the content can change between citation and reader access - and a permanent link removes the need for a retrieval date.
For pages where the content itself is the live data (real-time statistics, market dashboards, case trackers), use (n.d.) in the year slot, italicize the page title, and include a retrieval date. The retrieval date establishes which version of the changing content you actually saw.
APA in-text citations
In-text citation format
APA uses author–date parenthetical citations. For webpages, page numbers are usually unavailable, so direct quotes use paragraph numbers, section headings, or timestamps instead.
Paraphrase
Broadband access in rural counties remains uneven across regions (Karlsson, 2022).
Direct quote with no page numbers
Karlsson (2022) describes the gap as "a structural underinvestment, not a market signal" (para. 4). For pages without numbered paragraphs, cite by section heading and paragraph count: (Karlsson, 2022, Methodology section, para. 2).</
References
3 References
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).
American Psychological Association. (2020). Webpage on a website references. apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/webpage-website-references
American Psychological Association. (2020). Missing reference information. apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/missing-information
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