A parked domain address is one that is taken, however it's not linked to some other service - web or e mail hosting. Put simply, this kind of domain will not load any actual content if 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 that you will be able to keep it and not worry that someone else might register it in the meantime if, for instance, the website for it is not ready yet. You could create a temporary Under Construction webpage for a parked domain name while you're working on your website, or forward it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be employed when you have already registered domain.com, for instance, 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 forwarded to the .com since you do not need different sites for them.