How to Cite a Website in APA 7th Edition (With Examples)
Step-by-step guide to citing websites in APA 7th edition. Includes formats for webpages, online articles, government sites, and social media—with real examples and common mistake fixes.
Citing a website in APA 7th edition requires the author name, publication date, page title, site name, and URL. The format is simpler than earlier editions—"Retrieved from" is no longer required, and publisher location is dropped. Here's exactly how to format website citations in APA 7th.
Basic APA Website Citation Format
Author Last, First Initial. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage. Site Name. URL Example: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, November 14). Understanding how COVID-19 vaccines work. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/... Key rules: (1) Use sentence case for the webpage title—only capitalize the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon; (2) Italicize the title of the webpage; (3) Include the full URL—no period after the URL; (4) If no date is available, use (n.d.) in place of the year; (5) If no author is listed, move the title to the author position.
APA Website Citation: When There Is No Author
If no author is listed, start the citation with the title of the page: Title of webpage. (Year, Month Day). Site Name. URL Example: How to write a literature review. (2023, September 5). Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/... In-text citation: Use a shortened version of the title in quotes: ("How to Write," 2023). Do not use "Anonymous" when no author is named—that term is reserved for works where the author deliberately chose to be anonymous.
APA Citations for Different Website Types
Government website: Author/Agency. (Year, Month Day). Page title. Agency Name. URL — Example: National Institutes of Health. (2024, January 10). Clinical research. NIH. https://www.nih.gov/... | Wikipedia article: Title of article. (Year, Month Day). In Wikipedia. URL — Example: Academic writing. (2024, February 3). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_writing | Social media post: Author, A. [@username]. (Year, Month Day). First 20 words of post [Post type]. Platform. URL | News article: Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Article title. Publication. URL — For online news, treat as an online article, not a website citation.
Common APA Website Citation Mistakes
Mistake 1: Using title case instead of sentence case in the page title. Correct: "How to cite a source in apa format"—not "How to Cite a Source in APA Format." Mistake 2: Including a retrieval date. APA 7th only requires retrieval dates for content that changes regularly without a revision date (like wikis). Mistake 3: Writing "Retrieved from" before the URL—this was removed in APA 7th edition. Mistake 4: Using http:// instead of https:// when the current URL uses https. Mistake 5: Italicizing the site name instead of the page title—the page title is italicized, the site name is not.
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