PERRLA/Guides/APA 7/Whole website

How to Cite a Whole Website in APA 7

In APA 7, a whole website gets no reference list entry and no regular in-text citation. To mention a site in general, write its name in your sentence and put the URL in parentheses: We built our survey in Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com). As soon as you use specific information from the site, such as a fact, a definition, or a quote, cite the page it's on as a webpage, or as a report or article if that's what it is.

The format

Name of the Website (https://www.xxxx.com) in your sentence. No reference list entry.

PERRLA APA Experts ยท Updated October 21, 2026
Checked against the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition. Every example is formatted by PERRLA's reference engine.

First, the easy way: PERRLA

Mentioning a site in general? There's nothing to add to your references. Type the site's name and its URL in parentheses right in your sentence, and leave your references page alone.

Using something specific from the site? Find the page it's on and paste that page's URL into PERRLA's reference search. PERRLA builds the webpage reference, with the organization as group author, the title in sentence case, and the date or n.d. If what you found is a journal article, paste its DOI instead (or its PubMed ID), and PERRLA fills in every author, the journal, the volume, the issue, and the DOI.

After a URL lookup, check three things against the page: that a byline, if there is one, is the author; that the author is the organization behind the site, not the site's name; and that a government agency's parent agencies are in Website Name. Adding one by hand? Choose Webpage, add a Group Author (Organization), and fill in the Page Title, Website Name, and URL.

Not using PERRLA yet? Here is how to build the same reference by hand.

The parts of the reference

1. The site's name, in your sentence

Write the website's name the way the site writes it, in your own sentence. Don't italicize it or put it in quotation marks.

We recommended MedlinePlus to patients who wanted plain-language health information.

2. The URL, in parentheses

Put the site's URL in parentheses right after its name. Use the site's main address, because you're pointing to the site as a whole.

MedlinePlus (https://medlineplus.gov)

Writing for the web, like a discussion post or a blog? You can make the site's name a link instead of typing out the URL.

3. No reference, no author-date citation

That's the whole citation. Don't add a reference list entry, and don't add a parenthetical citation with an author and year. The name and URL in your sentence are enough for a reader to find the site.

Unit educators looked for team-training resources on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality website (https://www.ahrq.gov).

4. When it stops being a whole website

The moment you use something specific from the site, cite the specific thing. A statistic, a definition, a recommendation, a quote, or a paraphrase all come from one page or one document, and that page or document gets a full reference and an in-text citation.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). TeamSTEPPS 3.0. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps-program/index.html

Figure out what you're really citing first. A page of text is a webpage. A PDF with its own title and report number is a report. An article you found on PubMed is a journal article. A video on the site is a video.

Examples

A specific page on a site you mentioned in general

Naming the TeamSTEPPS site in passing needs no reference. Using its definition of TeamSTEPPS does, so you cite the program page. The page shows no date, and AHRQ's parent department goes where the site name would.

  • Parenthetical citation(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], n.d., What Is TeamSTEPPS? section)
  • Narrative citationAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, n.d.)
  • Later citations(AHRQ, n.d., What Is TeamSTEPPS? section)

A page on a site with its own name

The NCLEX site belongs to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. Telling your reader to visit the NCLEX website needs only its name and URL. Explaining when the Next Generation NCLEX launched means citing the page that says so, with NCSBN as the author and NCLEX as the site name.

  • Parenthetical citation(National Council of State Boards of Nursing [NCSBN], n.d.)
  • Narrative citationNational Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN, n.d.)
  • Later citations(NCSBN, n.d.)

An article you found through a website like PubMed

Saying you searched PubMed needs no reference. The systematic review you found there does, and it's cited as a journal article, with its own authors, journal, and DOI. PubMed doesn't appear in the reference at all.

  • Parenthetical citation(Hall et al., 2016)
  • Narrative citationHall et al. (2016)

In-text citations

A general mention of a whole website gets no author, no date, and no reference. The site's name and URL in your sentence do the job.

  • A general mention: Patients can find plain-language health information on MedlinePlus (https://medlineplus.gov).
  • A tool you used: We built the survey in Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com).
  • Writing online: link the site's name instead of typing the URL.
  • Something specific from the site: cite the page, with a reference and an author-date citation: (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], n.d.), then (AHRQ, n.d.).
  • A quote from a page with no page numbers: add the heading the quote sits under, followed by the word section, or the paragraph number: (AHRQ, n.d., What Is TeamSTEPPS? section) or (AHRQ, n.d., para. 2). A full heading takes no quotation marks.

The same idea covers databases you searched, like CINAHL or PubMed, and common software and apps, like Microsoft Word: name them in your sentence, with no reference. Specialized software, like SPSS or R, does get a reference.

Common mistakes

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). CDC. https://www.cdc.govThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website (https://www.cdc.gov) has resources for ... (no reference entry)APA 7 doesn't give whole websites a reference. Name the site in your sentence and put its URL in parentheses.
  • Nearly half of all U.S. adults have high blood pressure (CDC website).Cite the exact page the statistic comes from, with its own reference and an author-date citation.A fact always comes from a specific page or document. The general-mention rule is only for pointing to a site, never for information taken from it.
  • Hall, L. H., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A., & O'Connor, D. B. (2016). Healthcare staff wellbeing, burnout, and patient safety: A systematic review. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27391946/Hall, L. H., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A., & O'Connor, D. B. (2016). Healthcare staff wellbeing, burnout, and patient safety: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 11(7), Article e0159015. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159015PubMed is where you found the article, not where it was published. Cite the journal and the DOI.
  • We built the survey in Qualtrics (Qualtrics, 2026).We built the survey in Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com).A general mention gets the URL in parentheses, not an author and a year, and nothing on the references page.
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). TeamSTEPPS 3.0. https://www.ahrq.gov/Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). TeamSTEPPS 3.0. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps-program/index.htmlWhen you cite a page, use that page's own URL. The home page address only belongs in a general mention of the site.

Quick checklist

  • Pointing to a site in general: its name in your sentence
  • The site's URL in parentheses, or a link on the name online
  • No reference entry and no author-date citation for a whole site
  • Using a fact, quote, or idea from the site: cite the specific page
  • Decide what the thing really is: webpage, report, article, or video
  • Cite each page with its own URL, never the home page

Questions students ask

Do you put a whole website in the reference list?

No. APA 7 doesn't create reference entries for whole websites. Mention the site by name in your sentence and put the URL in parentheses, and that's the complete citation.

How do I cite information I found on a website?

Cite the specific page the information is on. Find who's responsible for it (usually the organization), the date or n.d., the page's title, the site name, and the page's URL. If the information is in a PDF report or an article you reached through the site, cite that report or article instead.

Do I need an in-text citation for a website I only mention?

Not an author-date one. The site's name and its URL in parentheses are the citation. Add an author and year only when you cite something specific, and then it points to a page in your reference list.

Do I cite the databases I searched, like CINAHL or PubMed?

No reference for the databases themselves. Name them in your sentence when you describe your search: "I searched CINAHL and PubMed for articles from 2020 to 2026." Then cite each article you use as a journal article.

Do I cite Qualtrics, Zoom, or Microsoft Word?

Common software and apps that you only mention by name don't need a reference, so name them in your sentence. If your readers might not know a tool, give its URL in parentheses the first time. Specialized software that shaped your results, like SPSS or R, does get a reference.

Can I just give my professor the website's home page?

Not for information you used. A home page link makes your reader dig for the fact, and it may not even be there next month. Link the exact page, so the reference leads straight to your source.

Rules checked against the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), Sections 8.13, 8.21, 8.22, 8.28, 9.11, 9.17, 9.27, 9.33, 10.1, 10.10, and 10.16, and the APA Style website's whole website, webpage, group author, and quotation guidance. The two example pages were opened on October 21, 2026, to confirm their authors, titles, site names, URLs, and that they show no date for their content; the article was verified against PubMed and its DOI.

PERRLA builds the reference for the exact page you used, so a website mention in your sentence and a page in your references never get mixed up.

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