There are two separate services you need for a functioning website - a domain name plus a hosting plan for it. When you type the Internet domain in your browser, you see the content that’s uploaded inside the web hosting account, but if that domain address is not linked to such an account or to an e-mail service, it's parked. In other words, the domain is registered and you are its owner, but it lacks content of its own. As a substitute, it can open either a pre-made “Under Construction / For Sale” webpage from the registrar company, or it could be forwarded to any other URL of your choice. The main benefit of parking a domain name is that you can keep it and be sure that no one else is going to take it. In the meantime, it's not going to take a slot for a hosted domain name within your account. You can also park domains if you have a .com, for example, and you register domains with other extensions like .net, .org or country-code ones to forward them to the main site in order to protect a brand name.