There are two services that you need for a working website - a domain name and a hosting plan for it. If you type the domain address in your browser, you see the content that’s uploaded within the hosting account, but if that domain name isn't linked to such an account or to an email service, it is parked. In other words, the domain name is registered and you're its owner, but it doesn't have any content of its own. Instead, it can open either a pre-made “Under Construction / For Sale” page from the registrar company, or it can be forwarded to any other URL of your choice. The main benefit of parking a domain address is that you can keep it and make certain that nobody else is going to take it. In the meantime, it's not going to block a slot for a hosted Internet domain within your account. You may also park domains if you have a .com, for instance, and you register domains with other extensions such as .net, .org or country-code ones to forward them to the main web site in order to protect a brand name.