There are two separate services that you’ll need for a functioning web site - a domain name and a website hosting plan for it. Whenever you type the domain address in your Internet browser, you see the content that’s uploaded in the web hosting account, but if that domain name is not linked to such an account or to an e-mail service, it's parked. Put simply, 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” page from the registrar company, or it may be forwarded to some other URL of your choice. The main benefit of parking a domain address is that you can keep it and make sure that no one else will take it. At the same time, it's not going to occupy a slot for a hosted Internet domain in your account. You can also park domain names if you have a .com, for example, and you register domain names with other extensions like .net, .org or country-code ones to direct them to the main site in order to protect a brand name.