How to Cite a Website (APA, MLA, and Chicago), With Examples
Websites often lack a clear author or date, which is what makes them tricky to cite. Here is how to cite one in APA, MLA, and Chicago, including the no-author and no-date cases.
Citing a book is easy: the author, title, publisher, and year are printed right inside it. A website hands you none of that reliably. Half the time there is no named author, the date is nowhere to be found, and it is not obvious what counts as the 'publisher.' That is what makes web pages the source students get wrong most. Here is how to cite one cleanly in the three styles you are most likely to need.
Whatever the style, you are looking for the same handful of parts: who wrote it (an author, or the organization if there is no person), the title of the specific page, the name of the site, the publication date (or a clear 'no date' if there isn't one), the URL, and, for some styles, the date you read it.
APA (7th edition)
Author or organization, then the date in parentheses, the page title in italics, the site name, and the URL.
World Health Organization. (2023, March 31). Depression. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/health-topics/depression — In-text: (World Health Organization, 2023)
MLA (9th edition)
Author (or the page title first if there is no author), the page title in quotes, the site name in italics, the date, and the URL without the https://. Add the date you accessed it, which MLA recommends for pages that can change.
"Depression." World Health Organization, 31 Mar. 2023, www.who.int/health-topics/depression. Accessed 28 July 2026. — In-text: ("Depression")
Chicago (17th edition)
Chicago cites a web page much like MLA but leads with the author or organization, and puts the access date before the URL when no publication date is given.
World Health Organization. "Depression." Accessed July 28, 2026. https://www.who.int/health-topics/depression.
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Citation Generator →The two things that trip everyone up
NO AUTHOR: do not leave it blank and do not guess a name. Start the citation with the organization that runs the site (the WHO, a university, a news outlet). If there is genuinely no organization either, start with the page title.
NO DATE: this is the big one, and it is where people quietly cheat. If the page shows no publication date, do NOT put the current year, and never invent one, that is a factual error a marker can check. Use the style's no-date convention instead: APA and Chicago write "n.d." (no date); MLA leans on the access date. The date you read the page is not the same as the date it was published, so keep them separate.
Get those parts right and a web citation is no harder than a book: identify who is really responsible for the page, use the true date or an honest 'n.d.', and keep the access date in its own place.
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