A parked domain address is one that's taken, however it's not connected to another service - web or e mail hosting. Essentially, such a domain won't open any real content in case you type it within a web browser, but nobody else can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The advantage of obtaining a domain name and parking it afterwards is that you will be able to keep it and not stress that someone else may register it meanwhile if, for instance, the website for it is not ready yet. You can create a short-term Under Construction page for a parked domain address while you're working on your site, or direct 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 acquire domain.net and domain.org, so as to protect a brand name or a trademark. In such a case, the .net and .org domain addresses can be parked and forwarded to the .com because you do not need different sites for them.