How to Cite a Website With No Author or Date (APA, MLA, Chicago)

You have found the perfect source, you go to cite it, and there is no author. Or no date. Or neither. Every style has a rule for this, and none of them is "leave it blank" or "write Anonymous".

Here is what actually goes in each slot.

The short answer

Missing	APA 7	MLA 9	Chicago (author-date)
Author	Start with the title	Start with the title	Start with the title
Date	Use `n.d.`	Use the access date	Use `n.d.`
Both	Title, then `(n.d.)`	Title, then access date	Title, then `n.d.`

The pattern is the same everywhere: the title moves up into the author position, and everything else shifts along. You never insert a placeholder word, and you never leave the slot empty.

Before you decide the author is missing

Most "authorless" pages do have an author. Check these four places first, because getting it right changes the whole reference:

The byline. Often below the title, sometimes at the very bottom next to the date.
The About or Team page. Guides and resource pages are frequently signed there rather than on the article.
The page source. Right-click, View Page Source, and search for author — many sites include <meta name="author"> or citation_author tags that never appear on screen.
The organisation itself. This is the big one. A page on a government, university, or charity site almost always has a corporate author — the organisation. "World Health Organization" is an author. "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" is an author.

That last case catches most students out. A page with no human byline usually is not authorless; it is authored by the body that published it.

APA 7th edition

No author. Move the title into the author slot, then the date:

Rising sea levels and coastal erosion. (2023, March 14). Environmental Science Hub. https://example.org/sea-levels

In text, use a shortened title in quotation marks: ("Rising Sea Levels," 2023).

No date. Use n.d. — short for "no date" — in the date position, in both the reference and the in-text citation:

Coastal Research Institute. (n.d.). Measuring shoreline change. https://example.org/shoreline

In text: (Coastal Research Institute, n.d.).

Neither. Combine the two: title first, then (n.d.).

When the author is the site. If the organisation that wrote the page is also the site name, give the author once and drop the duplicate site name.

About retrieval dates. APA 7 only wants a "Retrieved [date] from" line for content designed to change over time — a wiki entry, a live dashboard, a social media profile. A normal article that will look the same next year does not need one. Adding retrieval dates to everything is one of the most common APA 7 errors.

One caveat on "Anonymous". APA uses Anonymous as the author only when the work is explicitly signed that way. An unsigned page is not anonymous; it is untitled in the author slot, so the title moves up.

MLA 9th edition

MLA handles a missing author the same way — the title takes the first position:

"Rising Sea Levels and Coastal Erosion." Environmental Science Hub, 14 Mar. 2023, example.org/sea-levels.

In text, use a shortened form of the title in quotation marks: ("Rising Sea Levels").

Dates work differently from APA. MLA has no n.d. convention. When a source carries no publication date, give the date you accessed it at the end of the entry instead:

"Measuring Shoreline Change." Coastal Research Institute, example.org/shoreline. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.

MLA treats the access date as optional when a publication date exists — but when one is missing, it is the only date your reader gets, so include it.

Chicago author-date

Chicago has two systems. The one below is author-date, the style used in the sciences and social sciences, and the one our citation tool produces.

A missing author works as expected — the title leads, and the year follows it:

"Rising Sea Levels and Coastal Erosion." 2023. Environmental Science Hub. https://example.org/sea-levels.

With no date, use n.d. in the year slot, and cite it that way in text: ("Rising Sea Levels," n.d.).

If you are using Chicago's notes-bibliography system instead — footnotes, common in history and the humanities — the ordering differs, so check which one your department expects before you build the list.

Four mistakes worth avoiding

Writing "Anonymous" or "No author" in the author slot. No style asks for this except APA's narrow signed-Anonymous case.
Using the website name as the author when a distinct organisation published the page. The publisher and the author are different fields.
Dropping the date entirely instead of marking it n.d. or supplying an access date. A reader cannot tell the difference between "undated" and "you forgot".
Citing a URL that redirects. Paste the final address, not the one from the search results page.

Let the tool fill in what it can

Our Citation Generator reads a page's metadata and builds the reference for you — including pulling out authors and dates that are in the page source but not visible on screen. When something genuinely is missing, the Edit button lets you set the author, date, or publisher by hand, and the entry re-formats in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, or Vancouver as you switch styles.

It is free, needs no account, and your bibliography stays in your browser.

One last thing: your department's style guide overrules everything here. Style manuals get revised, and some institutions publish house rules that differ from the published edition. When your handbook and a website disagree, follow the handbook.