A parked domain address is one which is taken, but it's not linked to some other service - web or e-mail hosting. In other words, this type of domain name will not load any real content if you type it within a browser, but no one else can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The benefit of obtaining a domain and parking it afterwards is the fact that you will be able to keep it and not worry that somebody else could possibly register it meanwhile if, for example, the website for it is not ready yet. You can create a short-term Under Construction website page for a parked domain name while you're working on the web site, or forward it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be used if 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 such a case, the .net and .org domain names can be parked and forwarded to the .com because you do not need individual sites for them.