How to Cite a Website (With No Author or No Date)

Web pages are the source students cite most often and the one most likely to be missing something: an author, a date, sometimes both. This guide gives the full format for each major style, then works through the missing-information cases one at a time.

What to Collect

Before you close the tab, note these five things:

• Author: a person, or the organization responsible for the page
• Date: the most specific publication or last-updated date shown on the page (not the copyright year in the site footer)
• Title of the page, not the title of the whole site
• Site name
• URL, and today's date in case your style needs an access date

The worked examples below use two real pages. The first is the World Health Organization fact sheet "Mental health", dated 11 September 2026 when this guide was checked. The second is Yale University's "Yale Facts" page, which shows no date.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

In-text: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2026) on first mention, then (WHO, 2026).

When the author and the site name are the same, APA leaves the site name out so it isn't repeated. The page title is in italics and sentence case.

MLA (9th Edition)

In-text: ("Mental Health")

MLA skips the author element when an organization is both author and publisher, so this entry begins with the title. MLA also drops "https://" from URLs.

Chicago (18th Edition)

Footnote:

Bibliography:

Author-date in-text: (World Health Organization 2026)

Chicago says website content can often be cited in the notes or the running text alone. Add the bibliography entry when your instructor or publisher expects every source to be listed.

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

In-text: (World Health Organization, 2026)

IEEE

In-text: [1]

The IEEE Reference Guide's website format is author, page title, website title, accessed date, then the URL. An IEEE reference that ends in a URL has no final period.

No Author

Check the top and bottom of the page, the "About" page and the site footer first. If an organization published the page, the organization is the author, as with the WHO example above. Only when nobody can be identified does the title move into the author position.

Do not write "Anonymous" unless the page is actually signed that way. For more on authorless sources, see how to cite sources without an author.

No Date

Look for "last updated" or "last reviewed" text near the title or at the bottom of the article. A footer copyright year covers the whole site and is not the date of the page. If there is no date:

The APA example includes a retrieval date because a facts page is updated in place, with no archived versions. For an undated page that is unlikely to change, APA needs only (n.d.) and the URL. The Chicago note is taken from the Chicago Manual of Style's own citation quick guide.

No Author and No Date

Combine the two rules. The title goes first and the date slot is filled the way your style handles missing dates.

A page with no author, no date and no identifiable publisher is a weak source. Before you cite it, check whether the same information appears somewhere you can evaluate.

Other Edge Cases

No title. APA replaces the title with a short description in square brackets, for example [Map of campus bus routes]. MLA uses a plain description without quotation marks or italics.

Quoting without page numbers. APA: (WHO, 2026, para. 3) or (WHO, 2026, Key facts section). MLA: leave the locator out. Chicago notes can add "under 'Key Facts'".

Pages that change or disappear. If the content matters to your argument, save a copy in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and cite the archived URL. Chicago explicitly recommends this as an alternative to an access date.

A whole website. Name the site in your sentence and give its URL in parentheses. APA does not want a reference-list entry for a site mentioned in general.

A PDF, report or article hosted on a website. Cite it as what it is (a report, a journal article), not as a web page. See how to cite a PDF.

Common Mistakes

• Using the site's footer copyright year as the publication date
• Citing the homepage when you used a specific page
• Listing the web designer, or "Admin", as the author
• Repeating the organization as both author and site name in APA
• Adding "Retrieved from" before every URL in APA 7. The phrase now appears only together with a retrieval date.
• Leaving out the access date in Harvard or IEEE, where it is required

Sources for These Formats

• APA Style, "Webpage on a Website References" and "Missing Reference Information" (apastyle.apa.org)
• MLA Style Center, "How to Cite an Online Work" (style.mla.org)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., Citation Quick Guide, "Website Content" (chicagomanualofstyle.org)
• Pears and Shields, Cite Them Right, Harvard section on web pages
• IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, section T, "Websites"

For the full rules of each style, see the APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and IEEE guides.