How to Cite a Website in Chicago Style

How to Cite a Website in Chicago: Quick Answer

Decide the genre first. An institutional page (a privacy policy, an About page, documentation) uses CMOS 14.104: the note usually begins with the page title in quotation marks, and the bibliography begins with the owner or sponsor. A bylined post on a news site, magazine, or blog uses CMOS 14.87–98 and 14.105: author first, periodical or blog title in italics. Name the page in running text when that is enough. Add a note or parenthetical when you quote or rely on a specific claim. Add a bibliography or reference-list line only when the source is central, cited more than once, or required by your instructor. Prefer a publication, revision, or "effective" date. Add an access date only when no such date exists (CMOS 13.15). A public Wayback Machine snapshot can replace that access date (CMOS 14.104).

The Official Rule, from CMOS 18

A Chicago website citation exists to help a later reader open the same page you used. Pages are renamed, paywalled, or deleted; "last updated" labels move; and a homepage URL is not a citation of the paragraph you quoted. CMOS 14.103 therefore allows many websites to stay in the notes, or even in the sentence. CMOS 14.104 is the webpage pattern when a formal citation is needed. Douglas College's CMOS 18 website guide (last updated 22 April 2026) reprints the handbook's 14.103 limit:

Those sentences are why you do not invent a staff author for a byline-less policy page, why an access date is not a ritual field, and why CMOS 18 now prefers a public archive URL to a vague "accessed 2026." What's New in the 18th Edition flags 14.104 as new Wayback guidance. Before you write any element, check whether the source is still recoverable:

• A public permalink. Cite the page you read, not the site's homepage and not a bit.ly or other shortened link. CMOS 13.11 now discusses shortened URLs; the safer student habit is still the canonical https:// address on the page.
• An owner or sponsor. CMOS wants the organization that stands behind the site (Google, Yale University, Wikimedia Foundation), not a guessed personal author.
• A publication, revision, or "effective" date. Prefer the date on the page (CMOS 13.16). Add an access date only when no such date can be determined (CMOS 13.15, 14.104).
• A stable copy if the live page is likely to move. CMOS 14.104 explicitly allows a Wayback Machine or similar public archive URL in place of an access date.

Choose the system, then the citation depth

Chicago has two documentation systems. Notes-Bibliography (footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography) is the default in history, literature, and most humanities. Author-Date (parenthetical citations plus a reference list) is the default in many social sciences. The webpage elements are the same; the order and the punctuation change. Instructors, journals, and dissertation offices overrule CMOS when they conflict, so match the system your assignment names. Students using Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers, 9th edition, should also read Turabian vs Chicago. Turabian is the student handbook built on CMOS, not a third website style. Turabian 10 is announced for late 2026; until a syllabus names it, use the CMOS 18 punctuation on this page.

Three depths CMOS actually allows

Students often assume every URL must produce both a note and a bibliography entry. CMOS 14.103–14.104 are more economical:

1. Running text only. Name the site and the date in the sentence when that is enough for a reader to recover the page.
2. Note or parenthetical only. Use a formal citation when you quote, rely on a specific claim, or the page would be hard to find from the prose alone. CMOS says website content can often stop here.
3. Note or parenthetical plus a bibliography or reference-list entry. Add the list line when the source is central, cited more than once, or required by your instructor. In Notes-Bibliography, the note usually leads with the page title; the bibliography leads with the owner or sponsor.

If your syllabus says "include every source in the bibliography," do that. CMOS is describing good practice, not forbidding a fuller list.

Decide what kind of web source you actually have

The most common Chicago website error is forcing every URL into the webpage template. CMOS 18 splits online sources by genre, not by the fact that you opened a browser. A New York Times well article, a National Park Service report, and an X post are all "on the web." Only one of them is cited as a webpage. This URL teaches the institutional page. The sibling Chicago guides own the other genres in depth, so the Blum and Klein news samples below are here only because the Quick Guide groups them with blogs.

CMOS 14.105 then treats the blog as a news-like source. Douglas College reprints the handbook sentence: blog posts are cited like news articles and are frequently indistinguishable from them. Cite the author of the post, the title of the post in quotation marks, the title of the blog in italics, the date, and a URL. If the blog belongs to a larger publication, add that name. Add (blog) after the blog title only when the word is not already in the title and a reader would otherwise miss that it is a blog. If you cannot tell whether a site is a blog or a generic website, Notre Dame Australia's CMOS 18 notes restatement of 14.103 is the safe rule: treat the title like that of a website. Reserve the title-first webpage pattern for pages whose author is the site owner: privacy policies, About pages, institutional explainers, and documentation.

Recover the elements CMOS 18 actually wants

Owner or sponsor first in the list, title first in the note

This is the rule the 17th-edition website templates in older handouts usually get backwards. Look for the owner in the copyright line, the About page, or the organization named in the site header. Do not invent a staff writer from a byline-less page, and do not list "WordPress" or "Squarespace" as the publisher. If the owner and the site name are the same, CMOS does not want the name repeated. If there is no personal author, the note still begins with the page title in quotation marks; the bibliography begins with Google, Yale University, or Wikimedia Foundation. For the harder "no author" cases across styles, see How to Cite a Source with No Author.

Published, revised, accessed, or archived

CMOS 14.104 gives a date ladder, not a requirement to print every date you can find:

• Publication or "effective" date. Use it when the page states one, as Google's privacy policy does.
• Last modified / last revised. Use it for documentation and wiki pages, and keep a time stamp for pages that change during the day (the official Wikipedia example includes 21:54 (UTC)).
• Access date. Include it only when no publication or revision date can be determined. Capitalize "Accessed" in a bibliography; lowercase "accessed" in a note.
• Archived URL. CMOS 18's preferred alternative to a bare access date is a public snapshot. Cite the archive date and the Wayback URL. Do not stack an access date on top of an archive URL.

Author-Date replaces a missing year with n.d. and still needs the access or archive date. That pattern is in How to Cite a Source with No Date. Do not add "Retrieved from" — that is APA 6th-edition phrasing, not Chicago. The official Author-Date samples already place the year after the owner, so they write "Effective November 15" or "Last modified December 19" without repeating 2023 beside that month and day.

Italics are not automatic

APA italicizes webpage titles. Chicago does not. The official CMOS 18 change list for 8.193 says the name of a website is now usually italicized if it belongs to a category that would already be italicized — a book or a periodical — "whether or not there is (or was) a printed counterpart." CMOS 8.194 adds that titles of news websites can usually be treated like other periodicals. Generic sites stay roman: Google, Yale University, Wikimedia Foundation, Privacy & Terms. The New York Times, Wired, and The New Yorker are italic. CMOS 8.193 also says generic page titles such as Help or About are capitalized but not placed in quotation marks. CMOS 8.172 now capitalizes the initial The in running text when it is part of the official periodical name, but you may still drop it in a citation.

URLs keep the period, and usually the trailing slash

Chicago notes and bibliography entries end with a period after the URL. Dropping that period is an APA 7 habit and a CMOS error. Prefer the canonical https:// address on the page; do not replace it with a tracker-heavy share link. CMOS 6.120 now says a trailing slash at the end of a URL can usually be retained — copy the address as the browser shows it rather than "tidying" the slash away. If a long URL must break in print or in a PDF, CMOS 7.47 puts the break after https:// or before a slash, period, or similar mark — never by adding a hyphen. What's New also clarifies that an end-of-line break may be made before a colon in a URL except the colon in http: or https:. If the work has a DOI, cite the DOI URL instead of the landing page — see How to Use DOIs.

Cite the page you actually opened

The official Quick Guide still demonstrates the webpage pattern with Google's privacy policy as it stood on 15 November 2023. The live Google Privacy Policy now prints Effective May 26, 2026. Copy the official sample when you are learning the punctuation. When you cite the page you read today, use the date that page prints. Do not invent a third date, and do not keep 2023 because an older handout did.

The same caution applies to About Yale: Yale Facts. The live page still prints no publication or revision date. It now says the fact sheet represents 2025 data, including fiscal year, academic year, and graduating-class figures. That sentence is not a CMOS date. The official n.d. plus access-date or archive-URL pattern still applies. Purdue OWL's Chicago web-sources page still lives under a chicago_manual_17th_edition URL. Use it for extra practice sentences if it loads; do not take its 17th-edition italics or access-date habits over CMOS 18.

Notes-Bibliography: official webpage examples

The following notes, shortened notes, and bibliography entries are the CMOS 18 citation-guide samples, not invented pages. Use them as the pattern when the source is a webpage rather than a news article. Full first notes are for papers with no bibliography, or for the first citation when your instructor wants complete notes; shortened notes are enough after that when a bibliography is present (CMOS 13.21–26).

Page with an owner and an effective date

Notice that the official note omits the year after "November 15," while the bibliography restores 2023 with "Effective." Copy that pairing rather than "correcting" the note. When you cite the live 2026 policy instead, put 2026 in the bibliography and, for clarity, in the note.

Frequently updated documentation, with a time stamp

CMOS uses Wikipedia: Manual of Style to show a last-modified date plus a time stamp, not to recommend Wikipedia as evidence. Cite Wikipedia when you are writing about the page (editorial policy, a wording change, a revision war). Do not cite it as the source of a historical or scientific fact; follow the footnotes to a recoverable work, as Wikipedia for Research explains.

No publication date: access date or archive

The live institutional page is About Yale: Yale Facts. CMOS offers the archived snapshot as a substitute, not an extra field you stack on top of an access date. Pick one.

Notes-Bibliography: blogs and news-like posts

Cite a blog post the way you cite an online newspaper article (CMOS 14.105): author of the post, title of the post in quotation marks, title of the blog in italics, date, and URL. Blog posts, like newspaper articles, can often stay in the notes. Readers' comments are cited in the text or in a note and are omitted from the bibliography.

A real blog post with a parent publication

The Quick Guide does not print a standalone blog sample. Douglas College's CMOS 18 website guide demonstrates 14.105 with Lucy Ferriss's Lingua Franca post. The article is real: Ferriss, writer-in-residence emerita at Trinity College, published "The Language of Airportland" on 10 June 2018. The live URL no longer includes /2018/06/10/ in the path; cite the address you opened.

Official news-site samples (use the newspaper guide for the full pattern)

The CMOS 18 citation guide groups blogs with newspapers and magazines and demonstrates the pattern with current news-site articles. These are the official samples. For daily papers and magazine features as genres, switch to Newspapers in Chicago or Magazines in Chicago rather than cloning this webpage pattern.

The live articles are Blum's "Are Flax Seeds All That?" and Klein's "Meet Flip". Mead's New Yorker piece is the official print-magazine sample: drop the URL and keep a page number in the note only. If you used a database instead of the open web, CMOS allows the database name in place of the URL, as in the Pegoraro / LexisNexis Academic sample. Jacobs's Madonna review is the official 14.100 review form — author of the review, review title, review of the book, then the newspaper. It is not a 14.104 webpage.

Author-Date: the same official sources

Author-Date moves the year beside the owner or author and uses a parenthetical in the text. The running-text option still exists: you can write "As of November 15, 2023, Google's privacy policy stated . . ." and skip the parenthetical. If there is no publication or revision year, use n.d. and an access or archive date.

Official webpage examples

Match the parenthetical year to the year in the reference list. The live Author-Date Quick Guide currently prints (Wikimedia Foundation 2022) next to a 2023 reference-list year. That pair is internally inconsistent. Do not copy the 2022 parenthetical. Use 2023 with the official sample, or use the last-modified year on the revision you actually opened.

Official news, blog-like, and review examples

A comment stays in the prose: "Michelle (Reno) argued in a 15 December 2023 comment on Blum's flax-seed piece that . . ." The official Author-Date Quick Guide also allows (Michelle [Reno], December 15, 2023, comment on Blum 2023). Do not manufacture a reference-list entry for the comment.

Missing pieces and look-alikes

No personal author

Most institutional pages have no staff byline. That is not a defect. Lead the note with the page title and the bibliography with the owner, exactly as the Google and Yale samples do. Do not move the page title into the author slot, and do not write "Anonymous." If you cannot name an owner either, you may not have a citable source — see How to Cite a Website with No Publisher.

Generic titles

CMOS 8.193: Help, About, Home, and similar generic labels are capitalized and left without quotation marks when you refer to them in prose. In a formal citation of a specific named page ("Privacy Policy," "About Yale: Yale Facts"), keep the quotation marks. If the only title is Home, describe the page instead of inventing a headline.

Social posts are not websites

A public post is CMOS 14.106: usually a mention in the text, optionally a note, and only rarely a bibliography line. Quote up to the first 280 characters, keep emojis, and treat private messages as personal communications (CMOS 14.111). That workflow lives in How to Cite Social Media in Chicago Style, not here.

Government domains are not automatically webpages

A .gov URL can be a webpage (an agency explainer) or a government publication (a numbered report, a statute, a hearing). If the document has a report number, a publishing agency, and a formal title, cite it as a government document. CMOS 18 renumbered those patterns to 14.177–14.186. Start with How to Cite Government Documents in Chicago Style.

Mistakes this page is written to prevent

• Treating CMOS 17 templates as current. The 18th edition (2024) is the live manual. What's new is the official change list; 8.193 (website italics), 6.120 (trailing slashes), and 14.104 (webpages, including archives) are the paragraphs that changed how web citations read. Purdue OWL's web-sources page is still filed under CMOS 17.
• Copying the official Google 2023 date onto the live 2026 policy. Learn the punctuation from the Quick Guide. Cite the effective date printed on the page you opened.
• Copying the Author-Date Quick Guide's `(Wikimedia Foundation 2022)` parenthetical. The matching reference-list year is 2023. Make those two years agree.
• Putting a guessed author first on a generic webpage. Notes lead with the page title; the list leads with the owner.
• Italicizing Google, Yale, or Wikimedia. Those names stay roman. Italicize Wired or the New York Times, not every site name.
• Adding an access date to a dated page. If Google prints an effective date, you do not also need "accessed 2026."
• Treating "represents 2025 data" as a publication date. Yale Facts still has no CMOS date.
• Dropping the period after the URL, or deleting a trailing slash "to tidy it." Chicago keeps the period. CMOS 6.120 usually keeps the slash.
• Citing a shortened URL when the canonical address is sitting in the address bar.
• Citing Wikipedia as the evidence for a claim. Use it to reach a source you can recover; cite that source.
• Citing a tweet, Story, or Instagram carousel as a webpage. Use the social-media pattern.
• Labeling a magazine feature as a blog. Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations" is an Atlantic article, not The Atlantic (blog).
• Cloning the APA webpage template. APA italicizes the page title and wants a retrieval date only for unarchived, changing works. Chicago italicizes the news-site name, not the page title, and prefers an archive URL to a ritual access date.

A worked Chicago web-citation workflow

1. Save the page. Copy the canonical URL and, if the content is likely to move, a Wayback snapshot the same day you take notes.
2. Name the genre. Webpage, news/blog article, government document, social post, or multimedia. Follow the matching guide instead of forcing 14.104 onto all of them.
3. Recover owner, title, and date. Copyright line, About page, byline, "effective" or "last modified" label. Stop looking for a personal author once the owner is clear.
4. Choose a depth. Running text, note or parenthetical only, or a full list entry. Default to the shallower option CMOS allows unless your instructor wants every URL in the bibliography.
5. Format in the assigned system. Title first in a Notes-Bibliography note; owner or author first in the list and in Author-Date.
6. Check the local exception. A history seminar may want every website in the bibliography. A science journal using Author-Date may want n.d. and an accessed date on undated pages. The local sheet wins.

Related guides and worked examples

• How to Cite a Website in Chicago (worked example)
• How to Cite a Blog Post in Chicago (worked example)
• How to Cite Social Media in Chicago Style
• How to Cite a Newspaper Article in Chicago Style
• How to Cite a Magazine Article in Chicago Style
• How to Cite Government Documents in Chicago Style
• Turabian vs Chicago
• Wikipedia for Research: When and How to Use It
• How to Cite a Source with No Date
• How to Cite a Website with No Publisher