A parked domain name is one that is taken, but it's not associated with another service - web or e mail hosting. Put simply, such a domain won't open any actual content in case you type it within a browser, but nobody else can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The best thing about obtaining a domain name and parking it afterwards is the fact that you are able to keep it and not worry that someone else might register it meanwhile if, for example, the site for it is not ready yet. You may create a temporary Under Construction website page for a parked domain name while you're working on the web site, or direct it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be used if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you obtain domain.net and domain.org, so that you can protect a brand name or a trademark. In this case, the .net and .org domain addresses can be parked and forwarded to the .com because you do not need different sites for them.