A web page looks like the easiest source to cite, and it is one of the easiest to get wrong. The pattern itself is short. The trouble is that web pages hide the things a reference needs: the author is an organisation, the date is at the bottom or missing, and the name of the site is easy to confuse with the author.
APA Style is clear on one point before any other. You cite the page you read, never the website as a whole. Paste that page's address into EdCitation's Cite a source and it reads the author, date and title from the page, then lets you correct each one before the entry is built, which is where the rules below come in.
Every rule and every example below was checked in September 2026, the rules against the APA Style website and the examples against the pages themselves.
What is the APA 7 pattern for a web page?
An APA 7 reference to a web page has four parts in a fixed order: author, date, title, source. The American Psychological Association (2020) covers the type in Section 10.16 of the Publication Manual.
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page in sentence case. Site Name. URL
- Author. A person, several people, or the organisation responsible for the page.
- Date. As exact as the page allows: a full date, a month and year, or a year. If the page says when that content was last updated, use that date. A "last reviewed" date is not used, because a review does not mean the content changed.
- Title. In italics and in sentence case: a capital only on the first word, on the first word after a colon, and on proper nouns.
- Source. The name of the site, then the URL. When the author and the site are the same organisation, leave the site name out so it is not given twice.
The URL comes last, with no full stop after it, and "Retrieved from" is not written before it.
Finding the four parts on the page
Most of the work is reading the page properly. This takes about two minutes:
- Look for a byline at the top or the foot of the article. A named person is the author.
- If there is no person, find the organisation in the masthead, the logo or the "about" page. That organisation is the author, not a missing one.
- Find the date closest to the content, not the copyright line in the footer. Sort out which kind of date it is: published, updated or reviewed.
- Copy the title from the page itself, then put it in sentence case. Do not use the browser tab's title, which often carries the site name.
- Copy the URL from the address bar. The American Psychological Association (2022) asks you to paste it rather than type it, and to leave its capitalisation and punctuation alone.
- Paste the URL into EdCitation's Cite a source, compare the details it reads from the page with what you found in steps 1 to 4, and correct any that differ before building the entry, the date above all. A title the page gives in title case is set in sentence case for you, with names and initialisms kept.
How do I cite a web page with a named author?
When a person is credited on the page, that person is the author and the name of the site goes before the URL.
Faverio, M., & Kikuchi, E. (2026, March 12). Key findings about how Americans view artificial intelligence. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findings-about-how-americans-view-artificial-intelligence/
In the text: (Faverio & Kikuchi, 2026), or Faverio and Kikuchi (2026) as part of your sentence.
Two people are named with an ampersand in the reference and in brackets, and with "and" in your own sentence. Three or more are still named in full in the reference; only the citation shortens, to Faverio et al.
How do I cite a page written by an organisation?
When no person is named, the organisation that published the page is the author. APA calls this a group author. Most pages that look as if they have no author are this case.
World Health Organization. (2024, June 26). Physical activity. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity
The World Health Organization is both the author and the site, so the site name is left out. In the text: (World Health Organization, 2024). If you cite the organisation often, introduce an abbreviation the first time, (World Health Organization [WHO], 2024), and use (WHO, 2024) after that. The reference list always has the full name.
Government pages, where the author is an agency inside a department
The author is the most specific agency responsible for the page. Any parent departments move to the source position, where the site name would be. That keeps the citation short and the entry complete, which is how the American Psychological Association (2026) explains the split:
National Institute of Mental Health. (2018, July). Anxiety disorders. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders
In the text this is (National Institute of Mental Health, 2018), not the department. The same logic covers a page by one directorate of a large charity or a single faculty of a university.
What if the page has no author or no date?
If the author cannot be worked out at all, the title moves into the author's place. If there is no date, write n.d. where the date would go.
Check first that the organisation is not the author. A page with truly no author is rare. An unsigned story on a news site is one:
Hot school meals to be supplied by UK company. (2026, September 18). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3qjk9x989rqo
In the text, the title stands in for the author, in italics because it is in italics in the reference, and in title case. A long title can be shortened: (Hot School Meals, 2026). "Anonymous" is used only when a work is signed that way.
A page with no date looks like this:
NHS. (n.d.). Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder-gad/
That page shows only a "last reviewed" date, so it takes n.d. In the text: (NHS, n.d.).
Three kinds of date sit on a typical page, and only one of them is usable. A publication or "last updated" date that clearly belongs to the content you are citing is the date. A "last reviewed" date is ignored. A copyright year in the footer belongs to the whole site, not the page, so it is ignored too. With neither author nor date, combine the two: title first, then (n.d.). The article on missing authors, dates and page numbers covers every combination.
When does a website reference need a retrieval date?
A retrieval date is needed only when the page is designed to change over time and the versions are not archived. Most web pages do not need one.
A live counter, a currency converter or a social media profile is built to change. An article or a fact sheet is not, even if it is corrected now and then. A page that is updated but keeps dated versions, as many statistics releases do, is cited by the version you read.
U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). U.S. and world population clock. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved September 22, 2026, from https://www.census.gov/popclock/
This is the one place the word "Retrieved" still appears in APA 7.
Is a news story cited as a web page or as a newspaper article?
It depends on whether the site belongs to a printed newspaper. A story from a news site with no newspaper behind it, such as BBC News, CNN, Reuters or HuffPost, follows the web page pattern, with the title in italics:
Jeffreys, B. (2026, September 16). Schools in England get extra £500m in bid to avoid teachers' pay strike. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6lyqe9j1gy5o
A story from a newspaper's website follows the newspaper pattern. The title is plain and the name of the newspaper is in italics:
Adams, R. (2026, September 15). Career focus and a community campus: How the University of Birmingham got its mojo back. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/15/career-focus-community-campus-university-of-birmingham
The in-text citation is the same for both: (Jeffreys, 2026) and (Adams, 2026).
Citing a comment under an article
A comment has its own reference, credited to whoever left it, under the name or username shown with it. The comment's title, or its first 20 words, goes in plain text, then a square-bracketed description naming the page it sits under:
Commenter, A. A. (Year, Month Day). First 20 words of the comment [Comment on the webpage Title of the page]. Site Name. URL
Link to the comment itself if it has an address of its own, and to the page if it does not. Comment addresses go stale quickly, so check the link before you hand in.
Which pattern fits my page?
Find your case in the first column and copy the shape of the reference.
| The page has | Reference pattern | In the text |
|---|---|---|
| A named author | Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title. Site Name. URL | (Faverio & Kikuchi, 2026) |
| An organisation as author, which is also the site | Organisation. (Year, Month Day). Title. URL | (World Health Organization, 2024) |
| A government agency as author | Agency. (Year, Month). Title. Parent Department. URL | (National Institute of Mental Health, 2018) |
| No author | Title. (Year, Month Day). Site Name. URL | (Hot School Meals, 2026) |
| No date | Author. (n.d.). Title. Site Name. URL | (NHS, n.d.) |
| No author and no date | Title. (n.d.). Site Name. URL | (Title, n.d.) |
| Content designed to change | Author. (n.d.). Title. Site Name. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL | (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.) |
| A story on a newspaper's site | Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title. Newspaper. URL | (Adams, 2026) |
| A comment on a page | Commenter. (Year, Month Day). First 20 words [Comment on the webpage Title]. Site Name. URL | (Commenter, year) |
| A journal article read on the web, with a DOI | The journal article pattern, built from the DOI in Cite a source rather than from the address you read it at | (Author, year) |
What are the rules for the URL itself?
Give the address that leads straight to the page you used, as a link, with nothing added and nothing removed.
- A DOI beats a URL. If the work has a DOI, which most journal articles do, use the DOI and not the address you happened to read it at. The American Psychological Association (2022) asks for DOIs in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx, even when the source prints the old "doi:" form.
- No full stop after the URL, because it can break the link.
- No "Retrieved from" and no access date, unless the page is one of the changing ones described above.
- Do not add line breaks by hand. Let the word processor break the link where it likes.
- Nothing from a database. A work read in a common academic database is referenced as though you read the print version, with no database name and no URL. Databases that hold material found nowhere else are the exception.
- ISBNs and ISSNs are not included in APA references at all.
If the URL no longer works, the work has no source a reader can reach. Find another version, or cite it as a personal communication if that is honestly what it now is.
How do I cite a website in the text?
Give the author and the year, exactly as for a book or an article: (World Health Organization, 2024). Only the year goes in the text, even when the reference has a full date.
A direct quotation also needs a location. Web pages have no page numbers, so give a paragraph number, a section name, or both: (World Health Organization, 2024, Overview section). Two pages by the same author in the same year are told apart by letters, (World Health Organization, 2024a) and (2024b), assigned by the alphabetical order of their titles in the reference list. The rest of the in-text rules are in APA 7 in-text citations.
Should I cite a whole website?
No. The American Psychological Association (n.d.) is plain about it: do not create references or in-text citations for whole websites. If you only mention a site, name it in your sentence and put its address in brackets:
Students were asked to search for sources on Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com).
Nothing goes in the reference list for that mention. Once you use a fact from the site, cite the page it came from.
Can a tool build my APA references for me?
Yes, and EdCitation does it better than any other tool, because a reference there is looked up rather than written, which no chatbot can offer. Cite a source works in APA 7 and five other styles, free with no account, and it handles the two kinds of source in a web-heavy list differently, for a good reason.
| What you give it | Where the details come from | What you check |
|---|---|---|
| A DOI, a title, a PubMed ID or an ISBN | The publisher's record, with the source screened for retraction | Names in the title: one stored in title case is set in sentence case, keeping names and initialisms, so glance at any name made of ordinary words |
| A web address | The page itself, because no registry holds a web page's details | Each detail, before the entry is built: the author (usually the organisation), the date (never a review date or footer year) and the title |
For the journal articles and books, building from the record avoids typing mistakes in exactly the places the American Psychological Association (2025) says matter: the authors, the year and the numbers. For the web pages, the tool reads what the page shows and leaves the judgement to you, and this guide is the judgement. There is a page for APA 7 alone.
When the list is done, EdCitation's Verify references, also free, returns each entry as verified, doubtful ("check this") or not found, flags retracted papers, and never reports a reference it could not check as not found. A saved list, with each reference tagged and a copy that keeps its italics, needs only a free account. Pro, at $8 a month, adds References from a file and Mechanics QA; Max, at $24, adds Theoretics QA and the Library.
Quick questions
Do I need "Retrieved from" before a URL in APA 7?
No. APA 7 dropped "Retrieved from" before URLs. The word "Retrieved" appears only with a retrieval date, for a page whose content is designed to change, as in "Retrieved September 22, 2026, from" followed by the URL.
What date do I use if a web page only says when it was last reviewed?
Write n.d. in place of the date. APA 7 does not count a "last reviewed" date as a publication date, because reviewed content may not have changed. A "last updated" date can be used when it clearly applies to the content you are citing.
Is the title of a web page in italics in APA 7?
Yes. A web page is treated as a work that stands alone, so its title is in italics and in sentence case. A story on a newspaper's website is different: there the title is plain and the name of the newspaper is in italics.
How do I cite two pages from the same website in APA 7?
Give each page its own reference. If the author and the year are the same for both, add letters after the year, such as (World Health Organization, 2024a) and (World Health Organization, 2024b), and use the same letters in the reference list. Undated pages take n.d.-a and n.d.-b.
Does a URL go in the reference if I read the article in a library database?
Usually not. For works from the common academic databases, APA 7 asks for the same reference as the print version, with no database name and no URL. Give a link only for databases whose material is not available anywhere else.
Can I cite a web page from its URL alone?
Yes. Paste the address into EdCitation's Cite a source, free. No registry holds a web page's details, so they come from the page itself: check the author and the date in particular, and fix them before you build the entry.
References
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Whole website references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/whole-website-references
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
- American Psychological Association. (2022, July). DOIs and URLs. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/dois-urls
- American Psychological Association. (2025, October). Elements of reference list entries. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry
- American Psychological Association. (2026, June). Webpage on a website references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/webpage-website-references