Cite a Website
Sources from the Web
The open internet is often not the best place to find sober information. However, if you need to cite a website, use these instructions as a guide.
Building a Citation
Follow these steps to build a citation for an online resource.
This information is summarized from “MLA Works Cited”:
- MLA Works Cited: Electronic Resources
This article from the OWL at Purdue explains citation of online resources in detail, with several examples.
Gather Information
To begin, locate as much information as you can about the webpage you want to cite.
Sometimes, this information is nonexistent or redundant, in which case you can cut it from your final citation.
Author (if known)
Article or page title (if applicable)
Title of website
Name of publisher (if different from title of website)
Date of publication (if available); do not use a copyright date as a publication date
Page numbers or, more likely, paragraph numbers
Version number or, if an online article, volume and issue number
DOI or URL
Date you accessed the resource (this is optional for journal articles)
Once you have this information, you can construct your citation in the typical manner of MLA style. If any information is absent or redundant, simply leave it out.
Examples
Open-Access Article
Sidwa, Tom, et al. “Control and Prevention of Anthrax, Texas, USA, .” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 26, no. 12, , pp. 2815–2824, doi:10.3201/
The citation is similar to that for any article. If no DOI is available, use the the web address instead.
Article from a Database
Schaefer, Teresa, et al. “Fostering Online Learning at the Workplace: A Scheme to Identify and Analyse Collaboration Processes in Asynchronous Discussions.” British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 50, no. 3, , pp. 1354–1367. EBSCOhost, doi:10.
The name of the database precedes the DOI or web address. Use a permalink if there is no DOI. Although the instructions in the style guide state that the database should be named, all given examples indicate that it is the hosting platform (such as EBSCOhost) that MLA style actually requires.
Article from an Online Magazine or Blog
Simon, Michael. “Samsung Galaxy S21 Review: A Premium Phone That’s a Great Value.” PCWorld, , www.
Unlike a journal, this online magazine has no volume or issue numbers but is instead published like a blog. Author and date of publication, however, are clearly printed.
Webpage
“Allergies Health Center.” WebMD, www.
In this case, the website is the same as the publisher, so no publisher name is included. Note also that the date of publication is unknown. Since the webpage has no specific author, the citation begins with the page title.
YouTube Video
Lucas, Angela. “The Information Cycle.” YouTube, uploaded by University of Regina Archer Library, , www.
Typically, a YouTube video’s bibliographic entry starts with the video title. The name of the account that uploaded the video follows the words uploaded by. If the video has an identifiable creator different from the uploader, that creator’s name may appear before the title.
How to Find a Date
On the web, as in the real world, a date can be hard to find.
If the date of publication is not readily visible, try these techniques, taken from Malik:
Scan the page. The date may be present but not where you expect it. Look closely.
Look at the URL. Some web pages, especially blogs, will have the date of an article built into the URL, so look at your brower’s address bar.
Check the sitemap. Typically, a website has an XML sitemap located at [website URL]/sitemap.xml. This file may reveal dates when the pages were last modified.
Look at the source code. In most browsers, you can right-click on a webpage and select View page source to see the raw HTML. In the
<head>section, you may find metadata telling you when the page was published.Use the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine may have cached versions of the page. The first indexed version may be close to the publication date.
Use Google. Google’s date of indexing is usually close to the publication date.
Type inurl: into Google search, followed by the address of the webpage in question.
Once you get the search results, move your cursor to the end of the URL in your address bar and add &as_qdr=y15.
When you hit enter, Google should show you results with indexing dates.
Note: Many web pages have copyright dates in their footers. The copyright date is not a date of publication and may automatically update on a yearly basis.