Harvard Referencing – How to Cite a Website

In our modern, digital world, it’s no surprise that students often go online before heading to the library when researching an essay.

However, no matter how study methods change, clearly referencing sources will always be essential.

But citing a website isn’t quite the same as citing a book, since you need to provide different information in the reference list. To help out, we’ve prepared this quick guide on how to cite a website using Harvard referencing.

In-Text Citations

The basics of Harvard citations for websites are the same as for a book, requiring you to give the author surname and year of publication in parentheses:

The internet allows you to find information quickly (Moxley, 2009).

The trouble is that finding the author name and year of publication can be tricky. Make sure to check carefully, but if you can’t find the information needed, you still have options.

Firstly, if you can’t find the individual author of an article, you can name an organisation:

The University of South Queensland (2016) says that citing sources is crucial to academic writing.

If this isn’t appropriate, you can give the page title in the citation instead:

Citing sources is a vital part of academic writing (Harvard citation style: Introduction, 2016).

Secondly, if you can’t find the date of a website, you can use ‘n.d.’ (short for ‘no date’) instead:

Academic writing involves engaging with other people’s ideas (Victoria University, n.d.).

Any missing information should also be clearly indicated in the reference list, using the page title when no author is named and ‘n.d.’ when no date is available.

Reference List

The general format for a website in a Harvard reference list is:

Author Surname, Initial(s). (Year) Title of web page [Online]. Available at URL [Accessed date].

As such, the first source cited in the examples above would appear in the reference list as:

Moxley, J. M. (2009) Library and Internet Research [Online]. Available at http://writingcommons.org/open-text/information-literacy/library-and-internet-research/732-library-and-internet-research [Accessed 31 May 2016].

Remember, however, that Harvard referencing conventions sometimes differ from one university to the next, so check your style guide before setting to work.