A parked domain name is one that's taken, but it is not connected to another service - web or e-mail hosting. Essentially, this type of domain won't open any actual content when you type it in an Internet browser, but nobody can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The main advantage of acquiring a domain name and parking it afterwards is that you can keep it and not worry that someone else might register it in the meantime if, for example, the website for it is not ready yet. You may create a temporary Under Construction page for a parked domain name while you are working on your site, or forward it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be employed when you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you get domain.net and domain.org, so that you can protect a brand name or a trademark. In cases like this, the .net and .org domain addresses can be parked and forwarded to the .com as you don't need individual websites for them.