How to Cite a Website in APA, MLA, Chicago or Harvard
Updated
To cite a website, you need the author, the publication date, the page title, the website name and the URL. In APA 7 that looks like: Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL. With the Plagiarism Checker Plus Chrome™ extension, open the side panel on the page, click Cite, choose APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago or Harvard, and click Copy citation.
Website citation formats
The examples below use a made-up page. Titles shown in italics should be italicized in your paper.
Harvard isn’t a single official standard, so punctuation varies between universities — follow your institution’s guide.
When there’s no author
- APA 7: move the page title to the author position, then the date: How coral reefs recover after bleaching. (2024, March 5). Ocean Notes. URL. If an organization clearly wrote the page, use the organization as the author instead.
- MLA 9: skip the author and start with the title: “How Coral Reefs Recover after Bleaching.” Ocean Notes, … Don’t write “Anonymous”.
- Chicago: start with the title, or with the organization that publishes the site if it’s acting as the author.
- Harvard: most guides start with the title (or the organization) in place of the author.
When there’s no date
- APA 7: write (n.d.) for “no date”. Add a retrieval date only if the page is designed to change over time.
- MLA 9: leave the date out, and add an access date at the end (Accessed 12 Sept. 2026) — MLA recommends it when there’s no publication date.
- Chicago: use an access date, or a last-modified date if the page shows one.
- Harvard: usually (no date) or (n.d.), plus the accessed date.
Cite a page in one click with the extension
Cite a website with the Chrome extension
- Open the page you want to cite.
- Click the extension’s toolbar icon and choose the Cite tab — or right-click the page and choose Cite this page.
- Pick APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago or Harvard. Your choice is remembered.
- Check the citation. Open Edit details to fix the title, authors (one per line), website or publisher, published date or URL.
- Click Copy citation and paste it into your paper. Italics are kept when you paste into editors that support formatting.
- Signed in? Choose a project under Save to a project and click Save to build a bibliography you can open on the website.
The extension reads the citation information a page publishes — scholarly citation tags, Open Graph and structured data. On pages with a DOI, it looks up the DOI record when you’re signed in, which is usually more complete. Pages don’t always publish an author or date, so always give the result a quick check.