How to Cite a Web Page: Author, Date, Site Name, URL and Access Date

Web pages are the hardest sources to pin down: the author may be missing, there may be several dates, and the content can change. The examples for every style are generated below; this page is about where to look.

Elements and where to find them

Element	Where to look	Notes
Author	Byline under the title, signature at the end	If no person is named, the organization is the author
Date	Near the title, or "last updated" at the end	The footer copyright year is not a publication date
Page title	The main heading	May differ from the browser tab title
Site name	Logo, header, About page	APA omits it when it matches the author
URL	Address bar	The page you actually read
Access date	The day you read it	Needed in some styles

Where the styles differ

Item	APA 7	MLA 9	Chicago 18	IEEE	Vancouver
Page title	Italic	Quotes	Quotes	Quotes	Marked [Internet]
Site name	Roman; omitted if same as author	Italic	Usually roman	Site name	Publisher position
No date	(n.d.)	Omit date; access date advised	Access date	Access date	[cited …]
Access date	Only for changing, unarchived pages	Optional	When there is no date	Accessed: … [Online]. Available:	[cited year Mon day]
URL	With https://	Usually without https://	With https://	Available: URL	Available from: URL

See the DOI and URL guide for access dates and final punctuation.

Common mistakes

Citing the home page instead of the article's own URL.
Using the copyright year as the date.
Citing search-result or portal viewer URLs instead of the original site.
Leaving tracking parameters in the URL.
Not preserving pages that change. Record the access date and, where possible, save an archived copy (Wayback Machine or perma.cc).
Treating anyone-can-edit pages as authoritative. Formatting a citation correctly does not make a source reliable.

Korean web sources

Government and public-agency pages are cited with the agency as author. Prefer official statistics tables from KOSIS with their reference period over screenshots of dashboards. Many Korean journals cite laws in a legal format using the National Law Information Center rather than as web pages. Korean access-date formats vary, such as "검색일: 2026. 9. 23."

Case by case

Situation	What to do
Author but no date	APA uses (n.d.); MLA and Chicago add an access date
Date but no author	Use the organization as author, or move the title to the author position
Neither	Title first, no-date marker and access date, and reconsider whether the source is citable
Published and updated dates	Usually the update date, since that is the version you read
A PDF hosted on a site	Cite it as what it is, such as a report, not as a web page

Videos, social media posts and blog posts have their own formats in most styles: a video's uploader or channel is the author, and a post's first words stand in for a title.

Checklist

The URL points to the page itself
The date is a publication or update date, not a copyright year
Organizational authors are used when no person is named
The access date is included if the style requires it
Changing pages are archived

Choose "Web page" in the reference generator and set no-date or access-date options. For in-text citations, use paragraph numbers when there are no pages (how in-text citations work).

Side-by-side by style

These examples are generated by this site's formatting engine from fictional sample data (not real publications).

Style	Reference	In-text
APA 7th	Moreno, L. (2024, March 12). How to read a scientific paper efficiently. Research Skills Hub. https://researchskills.example/read-papers	(Moreno, 2024, p. 150) Moreno (2024, p. 150)
MLA 9th	Moreno, Lucia. “How to read a scientific paper efficiently.” Research Skills Hub, 12 Mar. 2024, researchskills.example/read-papers. Accessed 23 Sept. 2026.	(Moreno 150) Moreno … (150)
Chicago 18th (author-date)	Moreno, Lucia. 2024. “How to read a scientific paper efficiently.” Research Skills Hub, March 12. https://researchskills.example/read-papers.	(Moreno 2024, 150) Moreno (2024, 150)
Chicago 18th (notes-bibliography)	Moreno, Lucia. “How to read a scientific paper efficiently.” Research Skills Hub, March 12, 2024. https://researchskills.example/read-papers.	1. Lucia Moreno, “How to read a scientific paper efficiently,” Research Skills Hub, March 12, 2024, https://researchskills.example/read-papers. 2. Moreno, “How to read,” 150.
IEEE	[1] L. Moreno. “How to read a scientific paper efficiently.” Research Skills Hub. Accessed: Sep. 23, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://researchskills.example/read-papers	[1, p. 150] Moreno [1]
Vancouver (NLM/ICMJE)	1. Moreno L. How to read a scientific paper efficiently [Internet]. Research Skills Hub; 2024 Mar 12 [cited 2026 Sep 23]. Available from: https://researchskills.example/read-papers	(1, p. 150) ¹
Korean journals — social science	Moreno, L. (2024, March 12). How to read a scientific paper efficiently. Research Skills Hub. https://researchskills.example/read-papers	(Moreno, 2024, p. 150) Moreno (2024, p. 150)
Korean journals — humanities	Lucia Moreno, “How to read a scientific paper efficiently,” Research Skills Hub, 2024.3.12., https://researchskills.example/read-papers (accessed 2026.9.23.)	1) Lucia Moreno, “How to read a scientific paper efficiently,” Research Skills Hub, 2024.3.12., https://researchskills.example/read-papers (accessed 2026.9.23.) 2) Moreno, op. cit., p. 150.

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