How to reference a website in Harvard style

The easiest way to reference a website in Harvard style is to use our automatic generator, but there’s a manual way too if you want to write it by hand. Here’s how to do it both ways:

The easy way to reference a website in Harvard style

We can reference a website for you automatically (and for free) with our reference generator below. Simply paste the page URL into the search box (or search for some keywords) and then click on the result we find. It automatically find all the details required to build the reference, so you can copy it straight into your assignment.

How to reference a website in Harvard style manually

Follow these instructions to manually reference a website in Harvard style

First, you need to locate these details for the website: page or article author, page or article title, website name, published date, access date, page URL (web address).

• The author can typically be found on the page, but if there isn’t one listed you can use the website name in its place.
• The page title can be found near the top of the page, and you can also find it by hovering your mouse over the browser tab.
• The website name can usually be found in the web address or by looking for a logo or similar at the very top of the page.
• There often isn’t a publish date, but if there is it’ll be very close to the page title.
• The access date is the date you took information from the article (usually today).
• The page URL can be copied straight from the address bar of your browser and will start with either http:// or https://.

Then use this template and replace the coloured placeholders with the information you found on the page:

Author last name, Author firstname initial. (Published year) Page title. Website name. Available at: Page URL (Accessed: Access date).

The final reference should look like this:

What to do when there’s no author

Often you’ll find a webpage doesn’t have a clear personable author, and in this case you can substitute the page title in the place of the author instead. Adapting the example above would look like this:

What about multiple authors?

When the page has multiple authors you should include each of them in the same format, separated by a comma. The last author should also be separated by ‘and’. For example