Citing a website in APA format trips up even experienced students. The 7th edition (released in 2020 and still current in 2025) changed several rules from the 6th edition — including how to handle URLs, missing authors, and retrieval dates. If you learned APA a few years ago, there's a good chance some of what you know is now out of date.
This guide covers everything you need: the correct template, a real step-by-step example, the most common mistakes, and how APA handles the situations that come up most often.
The APA 7th Edition Template for Websites
The basic structure for a webpage or online article in APA 7th edition is:
Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page. Site Name. URL
A few things to note right away: the title of the page is in sentence case (only capitalize the first word and proper nouns), and it is italicized. The site name follows in plain text, and no period goes after the URL.
Step-by-Step Example
Let's walk through a real example. Say you want to cite an article with the following details — Author: Jonathan Amos. Date: March 15, 2024. Title: Scientists find ancient river system under Antarctica. Site: BBC News.
- Author: Write the last name, then a comma, then the first initial followed by a period. → Amos, J.
- Date: Put the year first, then month and day in parentheses, followed by a period. → (2024, March 15).
- Title: Write the full title in sentence case and italicize it. → Scientists find ancient river system under Antarctica.
- Site name: Write the name of the website in plain (non-italic) text, followed by a period. → BBC News.
- URL: Paste the full URL. No angle brackets, no period at the end.
The completed citation looks like this:
Amos, J. (2024, March 15). Scientists find ancient river system under Antarctica. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68593472
What to Do When There's No Author
Many websites don't list an individual author. In APA 7th edition, when there is no author, move the title to the author position. Keep it italicized, and skip the author field entirely.
Example — Government site (no named author):
Federal student aid overview. (2024, January 10). U.S. Department of Education. https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types
This pattern applies to most government and institutional pages, corporate websites, and reference articles where the publisher is the de facto author.
What to Do When There's No Date
If a webpage has no publication or update date, use "n.d." (which stands for "no date") in the date position:
When a page has no visible date, replace the year with n.d. — for example: Author, A. A. (n.d.). Title of the page. Site Name. URL
If both the author and the date are missing, start with the italicized title: Title of the page. (n.d.). Site Name. URL
Example — Blog post with no date:
Smith, R. (n.d.). 10 productivity habits that actually work. Productivity Hub. https://www.productivityhub.com/habits
No-date pages are common on personal blogs and older institutional sites. Use (n.d.) rather than guessing or omitting the date field entirely.
More Worked Examples
News Article
Metz, C. (2024, February 8). OpenAI introduces new tool for detecting AI-generated images. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/technology/openai-detection-tool.html
Government Page
Climate change indicators: Wildfires. (2023, July). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/wildfires
Blog Post
Patel, N. (2023, November 14). How to write a headline that gets clicks. Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/headline-writing/
No-Author Page
History of the internet. (2022, March 30). Computer History Museum. https://www.computerhistory.org/internethistory/
Notice that when there is no individual author, the italicized title moves to the front. The site name still follows the date.
Do You Need a Retrieval Date?
In APA 6th edition, you often included a retrieval date ("Retrieved March 10, 2024, from..."). APA 7th edition dropped this requirement for most sources. You only need a retrieval date if the content is designed to change over time and there is no archive — things like live database entries or wiki pages that are frequently updated. For standard articles and web pages, leave it out.
Common APA Citation Mistakes
- Wrong capitalization in the title — APA uses sentence case, not title case. "How to Write a Literature Review" should be "How to write a literature review" (except for proper nouns).
- Forgetting to italicize the page title — Webpage titles are italicized; the site name is not.
- Adding a period after the URL — The URL is the final element and takes no period.
- Using 6th edition rules — APA 7th edition removed the publisher location for books and changed how DOIs and URLs are formatted. If your style guide was written before 2020, double-check it.
- Treating "no author" as "Anonymous" — APA 7th edition does not use [Anonymous] as an author placeholder. If there is genuinely no author, move the title to the author position.
APA vs. MLA: The Quick Difference
Students frequently confuse APA and MLA format. The key differences for websites: APA puts the year right after the author and uses initials for first names; MLA puts the full first name and puts the date at the end. APA italicizes the page title; MLA puts it in quotation marks. If your class or institution specifies a style, use that one — they are not interchangeable.
Generate Your Citation Automatically
If you're working on a paper with multiple sources, doing this manually for every citation gets tedious fast. Use our free Citation Generator to create properly formatted APA 7th edition citations — as well as MLA, Chicago, and ABNT — in seconds.
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Getting citations right matters — not just because your professor checks them, but because proper attribution is the foundation of academic honesty and gives readers a clear path back to your sources. Take the extra minute to do it correctly.