How to cite a website in Harvard

The Harvard format for citing a website is:

Author, A.A. (Year) Title of webpage. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).

Examples

Karlsson, E. (2022) What rural broadband data actually shows. Available at: https://www.ruralpolicy.org/broadband-data (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

Standard case: individual author with surname and initials, year in parentheses, page title in italics and sentence case, Available at: followed by the URL, access date in parentheses with full month name.

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Harvard citation fields explained

Author

Format the author's surname followed by a comma and initials with periods: Bhatt, R. Harvard uses initials for given names rather than full first names - a distinction from MLA, which spells out first names. For two authors, list both surnames with initials, joined by "and": Bhatt, R. and Reyes, T. For three authors, list all three with the conjunction before the last: Bhatt, R., Reyes, T. and Park, H. For four or more authors, list only the first author followed by "et al.": Bhatt, R. et al. The four-or-more threshold differs from the MLA three-or-more threshold and the APA varying thresholds - Harvard's threshold is its own.
Year

The year of publication, in parentheses immediately after the author's name: (2021). Use the year shown on the page itself. If only a copyright year appears at the bottom of a website, that is typically the most recent year of overall site updates and may not match the date of the specific page; prefer the page-level publication date when one is available.
Title of webpage

The page title in sentence case and italics. Capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. The italics treat the page as the work being cited; this differs from MLA (which puts the page title in quotation marks) and APA 7 (which italicizes the title in sentence case, similar to Harvard but with different surrounding punctuation).
Available at

The phrase Available at: precedes the URL with a space and a colon. This is a Harvard-specific convention - neither MLA nor APA uses this prefix. The URL follows immediately after the colon. Drop the protocol (https://) when the convention permits, or include it for clarity.
Access date

The access date in parentheses with the prefix Accessed:: (Accessed: 14 March 2024). The full month name is spelled out in Harvard (in contrast to MLA's abbreviated months). The access date is required for every webpage citation in Cite Them Right Harvard, regardless of whether the page has a fixed publication date - a more aggressive requirement than other styles. The access date establishes which version of the page you saw.

Examples of website citations in Harvard

Page with named author and date

Karlsson, E. (2022) What rural broadband data actually shows. Available at: https://www.ruralpolicy.org/broadband-data (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

Standard case: individual author with surname and initials, year in parentheses, page title in italics and sentence case, Available at: followed by the URL, access date in parentheses with full month name.

Organization as author

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023) Tickborne diseases of the United States. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/diseases (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

For an organizational author, use the organization's full name without inversion. Initials are not used for organizations. The rest of the reference follows the standard format.

Page with no listed author

The history of standardized testing in U.S. public schools (2020) Available at: https://www.edreform.org/history-testing (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

With no individual or organizational author identifiable, the page title moves to the author position. The italics carry over from the title slot, and the year follows in parentheses as in any other reference.

Page with no date

Merriam-Webster (no date) Hermeneutic. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hermeneutic (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

For pages with no publication date, use (no date) in the year position. Harvard's convention is to spell out "no date" rather than use an abbreviation. The access date provides temporal anchoring when no publication date is available.

Page with publisher distinct from the author

Reyes, T. (2024) Notes on editorial practice for long-form online work. Halfway House Audio. Available at: https://www.themargins.com/long-form-editorial (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

When the website's publisher differs meaningfully from the author or when identifying the publisher adds retrievability information, list the publisher between the title and Available at:. The publisher is in plain text. Harvard does not always require a publisher field; include it when it adds context.

Harvard edge cases for Website

Tricky citations don't have to be tricky. Pick a scenario to see the rule and a worked example.

Scenario 01
Harvard variants - Cite Them Right vs. institutional variants

Harvard is a family of styles, not a single fixed style. The most common variants are Cite Them Right Harvard (used widely across UK higher education and described in the manual cited above) and institutional Harvard (variations adopted by specific universities, often documented on their library websites). The format examples in this page follow Cite Them Right; a specific university may require small variations (different punctuation, different access-date prefix, different formatting for multi-author works). When writing for a specific institution, check the institution's library guide. The differences between variants are typically small but affect grading.

Scenario 02
Access date - required even when a publication date exists

This is the most distinctive Harvard rule on webpage citations. Cite Them Right Harvard requires an access date for every webpage citation, regardless of whether the page has a fixed publication date or whether the content is changeable. APA 7 reserves access dates for content likely to change; MLA 9 reserves them for pages without publication dates; Harvard applies them universally. If your institution permits omission of access dates for stable, dated content, follow the institutional preference; the universal convention is the conservative default.

Scenario 03
Online news article on a news website

News articles use the newspaper or news periodical template, not the webpage template. The article title is in quotation marks (or single quotes in some Harvard variants), the news outlet name is italicized, and the publication date follows. Cite Them Right Harvard format for online news: Author, A.A. (Year) 'Title of article', Newspaper Name, Day Month. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).

Scenario 04
Whole website cited as a source

To cite an entire website rather than a specific page, use the website itself as the work, with the website name in the title slot (italicized): The Margins (2024) Halfway House Audio. Available at: https://www.themargins.com (Accessed: 14 March 2024). The author position is filled by the website's editor, sponsoring organization, or the website's name itself if no editor is identifiable.

Scenario 05
Page in a database

For pages accessed through a database, identify the database as a second container after the original publication source: Author, A.A. (Year) Title of work. Available at: URL [database URL] (Accessed: Day Month Year). The database identifier helps the reader retrieve the source through the same access path you used. Specific Harvard variants handle database citations slightly differently; check the institutional guide.

Scenario 06
Page with no date and no author

Move the page title to the author position and use (no date) for the year: Title of work (no date) Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year). Two missing fields require both substitutions in their respective slots. The access date is essential here because it provides the only temporal anchoring.

Scenario 07
Wikipedia entry

For Wikipedia entries, use the entry title as the author (Wikipedia entries are collaboratively authored), the year of the most recent revision in parentheses, and a permalink URL pointing to the specific revision: Coastal redevelopment (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coastal_redevelopment&oldid=1213094782 (Accessed: 14 March 2024). The permalink ensures your reader sees the same version you cited.

Scenario 08
URL that has changed since access

If the URL has changed since you accessed the page, use the URL where you originally accessed it. Do not silently substitute a new URL. The access date in your citation establishes when that URL pointed to the content you used. If the original URL no longer resolves and you preserved an archived version (Wayback Machine), cite the archived version with the archive URL.

Harvard in-text citations

In-text citation format

Harvard uses author-date in-text citations: the author's surname and the year of publication in parentheses, with page numbers added for direct quotes when available.

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'. Single quotation marks are typical in Cite Them Right Harvard for short quotations; double quotation marks are typical in some institutional variants. Webpages typically have no page numbers; if the page has paragraph numbers or named sections, those can be used: (Karlsson, 2022, para. 4).

Author named in the sentence

When the author's name appears in the sentence introducing the quotation or paraphrase, the parenthetical citation includes only the year: "Karlsson (2022) describes…" The year goes in parentheses immediately after the author's name.

Organization as author

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023) - for organizations, Harvard permits abbreviation in subsequent citations after the first full mention. Introduce the abbreviation parenthetically on first use: "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2023)"; subsequent citations use (CDC, 2023).

Multiple authors

For two authors: (Karlsson and Reyes, 2022). For three authors: (Karlsson, Reyes and Park, 2022). For four or more authors: (Karlsson et al., 2022). The four-or-more threshold for "et al." is Harvard-specific.

No date

(Merriam-Webster, no date) - when the works cited entry uses "no date" for the year, the in-text citation reproduces "no date" in the parenthetical.

References

Works Cited
  1. Pears,
  2. . and Shields, G. (2022) <em>Cite them right: The essential referencing guide</em>. 12th edn. Bloomsbury Academic.
  3. University of Leeds Library (no date) <em>Harvard referencing style</em>. Available at: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1404/referencing/52/harvard_referencing_style (Accessed: 14 March 2024).
  4. Anglia
  5. uskin University Library (no date) <em>Guide to the Harvard style of referencing</em>. Available at: https://library.aru.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm (Accessed: 14 March 2024).

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