A parked domain is one that is taken, however it's not linked to any other service - web or e mail hosting. Essentially, this type of domain name won't load any actual content when you type it in a web browser, but no one else can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The best thing about obtaining a domain and parking it afterwards is the fact that you are able to keep it and not worry that somebody else might register it meanwhile if, for instance, the website for it is not ready yet. You may set a short-term Under Construction page for a parked domain while you're working on your site, or direct it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be employed if you have already registered domain.com, for example, and you acquire domain.net and domain.org, in order to protect a brand name or a trademark. In this situation, the .net and .org domains can be parked and directed to the .com since you don't need different sites for them.