How to Cite a Website With No Author or No Date
Citing books is straightforward because the author, year and publisher are printed on the first few pages. Websites are messier. Many pages are written by organisations rather than individuals, and plenty have no visible date at all. Here is how to handle the most common missing pieces without guessing.
No individual author
When no person is credited, use the organisation or company that publishes the site as the author. A page on a government health site, for example, would list the agency name.
APA: World Health Organization. (2022). Healthy diet. https://example.org/diet
MLA: World Health Organization. “Healthy Diet.” WHO, 2022, example.org/diet.
No date
If you cannot find any publication or update date, APA uses the abbreviation n.d., which stands for no date. In MLA, you simply leave the date out and rely on the access date or omit it, depending on your instructor’s preference.
APA: Smith, J. (n.d.). Study tips for exams. https://example.com/tips
No title
A page should almost always have a title, but if it truly does not, describe the content in square brackets, for example [Home page]. Do this sparingly and only when no heading exists.
What never to do
Do not invent an author, and do not use the website’s domain name as a substitute for a real author. Do not put your own name or your instructor’s name as the author. When details are genuinely missing, the styles have built-in conventions, like n.d., precisely so that you never have to guess.
Our generator lets you leave the author or date blank and applies these rules automatically, so a missing field will not break your citation.