How to Cite a Website With No Date in MLA

When a website has no publication date, MLA's instruction is to omit the Publication Date element entirely and move straight from the publisher to the location. You do not write n.d., you do not write "no date," and you never guess. What takes its place, if anything, is an access date — the day you viewed the page — added at the end of the entry after the URL.

That is the whole rule, and it applies to every undated source, not just websites. What makes web pages awkward is that so many of them look dated and are not — a copyright year, a "last updated" line, and a real publication date are three different things.

Why MLA Rejects "n.d."

Earlier citation styles used n.d. ("no date") and n. pag. ("no pagination") as stand-ins for missing information. MLA 9 does not. The guidance from the MLA Style Center is blunt: do not use placeholders for unknown information unless your instructor specifically asks you to.

The reasoning is about honesty of structure. In MLA's core-elements system, an element that is absent is absent — the entry simply ends earlier, and every element that follows shifts left. A placeholder pretends the element exists and carries information. Skipping it records the truth: the source does not have a date.

The first entry is correct. The second is not, no matter how many style sites still show it. The only exception is an instructor who explicitly requires n.d. — follow your assignment sheet over MLA.

Where the Access Date Goes

The access date is an optional element that MLA places in the last slot of the entry, after the location:

It is written with the word Accessed, the day, the abbreviated month, and the year — Accessed 12 May 2026 — and it ends the citation. Note the punctuation pattern around it: a comma separates the URL from the access date, and a period closes the entry.

When should you add one?

• The page has no publication date. The access date becomes the only date in the entry, which is exactly what a reader needs to judge how current the information is.
• The page changes often — news feeds, dashboards, calendars, wikis, and anything without stable content.
• The page could be removed. Blogs and small sites go offline more often than journals do.

If the page carries a clean publication date, you may leave the access date off. Adding it is never an error, so when in doubt, include it.

Nothing Changes in Your In-Text Citation

This is the part students double-check and then relax about: the date element has no role in parenthetical or narrative citations. An MLA in-text citation carries the author and the locator, and nothing else. Removing the date from the Works Cited entry changes the citation not at all.

There is no year in parentheses — MLA is not an author-date style. So the in-text side of an undated website citation is identical to the in-text side of a dated one. The full rules are in our in-text citation guide.

Undated Website Citation Examples

Page with an author, no date:

Page with no author and no date — two elements omitted, title moves to the front:

Organization page with a publisher but no date:

Undated page where you choose to omit the access date — acceptable when the source is stable:

Look for a Real Date Before You Give Up

"No date" usually means "no date in the obvious place." Check these four spots before you omit the element:

1. The byline area directly under the headline — publication date, update stamp, or "revised" line.
2. The page footer, next to the copyright symbol. For a whole site, this copyright year is often the correct date.
3. The top or bottom of the article body — many publications put a machine-readable timestamp there while showing only a relative time ("3 days ago") on screen.
4. The site's About or Contact page, which sometimes carries the founding or copyright year for the publication as a whole.

If you find a date, cite it as a normal publication date. If you find nothing, omit the element — do not convert a copyright year into a publication date for an individual page unless the site makes clear that year applies to its articles.

Dates That Are Almost Right

Some sources give a date that is partial, approximate, or uncertain. MLA does not ask you to clean these up:

• Only a year is given — cite the year alone: 2019. Do not invent the month and day.
• Month and year only — cite them as given: Sept. 2019. Abbreviate the month as usual.
• An approximate date — record it as the source states it, written out: early 19th century, circa 1990.
• An uncertain date — record it and add a question mark: 1890?
• A date published elsewhere — if a reliable reference source establishes the date, you may supply it in square brackets, e.g. [2019], which signals that you supplied it.

The bracket convention is the only time you add information the source does not show, and it must come from a source you could cite in its own right.

Copyright Year Is Not Always a Publication Date

A copyright notice in the footer tells you when the site's material was copyrighted, not when the page you are reading was published. It is the right date for an entire website citation, where the site itself is the work:

It is usually the wrong date for a single article that was published years after the copyright line was set. When the two disagree, prefer the date attached to the specific page — and if there is no date attached to the page at all, fall back to omitting the element.

Where the Missing Date Actually Matters

Because the date element is dropped rather than replaced, an undated citation ends up shorter than a normal one — which makes it easier to get subtly wrong. The most common patterns:

• Blog posts — many personal blogs publish without timestamps. See citing a blog post.
• Government and reference pages — updated continuously without an accompanying stamp.
• Database records — sometimes a reprint lacks the original publication date; the container information still applies, per citing a database.
• Unsigned, undated pages — both elements gone at once, which is why the no-author and no-date rules are usually read together. See citing a website with no author.

In every case the sequence stays the same: elements you have, in order, then a period, then the access date if you are adding one.

Common Mistakes

• Writing n.d., "no date," or "n.d. (no date)" — MLA omits the element instead.
• Using the year you accessed the page as if it were the publication date — the two are different elements and only Accessed marks the latter.
• Inventing a month and day from a copyright year.
• Adding the access date in the middle of the entry instead of at the very end, after the URL.
• Putting a date in the parenthetical citation — in-text citations never carry dates in MLA.
• Skipping the access date on a page that has neither a date nor stable content.
• Leaving a stray comma where the publication date used to be.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I write n.d. when a website has no date?

No. Omit the Publication Date element entirely. MLA specifically advises against placeholders such as n.d. unless your instructor asks for them — the entry simply runs from the publisher straight to the URL.

Is an access date required when the publication date is missing?

It is optional in MLA, but strongly recommended in this situation: with no publication date, the access date is the only indication of how current the page is. Add it after the URL, written as Accessed 12 May 2026.

Does a missing date change my in-text citation?

No. In-text citations in MLA carry the author and the locator only, so dropping the date from the Works Cited entry has no effect on the parenthetical form.

What if I can find the date somewhere else?

If a reliable external reference establishes the date, you may supply it in square brackets to show that you did. Otherwise cite the page as it is — a partial date as given, or no date at all.