A parked domain is one that's taken, but it's not connected to any other service - web or e mail hosting. Essentially, such a domain name will not open any actual content when you type it within a web browser, but no one can take it as you've already registered it and you are its owner. The benefit of getting a domain name and parking it afterwards is the fact that you can keep it and not worry that someone else may register it in the meantime if, for instance, the website for it is not ready yet. You can create a temporary Under Construction website page for a parked domain while you are working on the web site, or forward it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be used when you have already registered domain.com, for example, and you obtain domain.net and domain.org, in order to protect a brand name or a trademark. In this case, the .net and .org domain names can be parked and directed to the .com since you do not need different sites for them.