Domain parking is holding a registered domain that has no real website on it yet. Visitors who type the name see a placeholder: a "coming soon" notice, a page of ads, or a message that the name is for sale. It is the default state of most freshly bought domains.
What happens behind a parked domain
When you buy a name, the registrar usually sets it to use its own nameservers, which point the name at a shared parking server. That server looks at which domain was requested and shows the matching placeholder. Nothing is built for you; it is one generic page served for thousands of names.
There are two broad kinds. Free parking is the registrar's own holding page, often advertising the registrar. Monetised parking uses services such as Sedo or Bodis to show pay-per-click ad links, with any ad revenue shared with the owner. Domain investors use the second kind to earn a little from names while waiting to sell them.
Example: a business name reserved early
A bakery owner registers northendbakes.com six months before opening. Until the site is ready, the name sits parked on the registrar's holding page. When launch day comes, she changes the nameservers or DNS records to her website host, and the parking page disappears as soon as resolvers pick up the change.
Does a parked domain hurt or help?
For the owner of a real business, parking is harmless as a short pause and pointless as a long-term plan. Google has said it tries to keep parked pages out of search results, so a parked name earns no rankings. Ad-filled parking pages can also look spammy to anyone who finds your name before launch, and the ads may promote competitors. If you own extra names, such as a common misspelling or a .net version, pointing them at your real site with a 301 redirect is more useful than leaving them parked.
Parking mistakes worth avoiding
- Leaving monetised ads on your business name. Visitors may click straight through to a rival advertising on your own brand.
- Forgetting the name is still parked. Printed flyers with an address that shows a registrar ad page lose trust fast.
- Parking spare domains instead of forwarding them. Domain forwarding sends that traffic somewhere useful.
- Assuming parking protects a trademark. Holding a name stops others registering it, but it is not a legal claim to the brand.
Related terms
- Domain name: the address sitting parked.
- Domain forwarding: sending a spare domain to a live site instead.
- Nameservers: the setting you change to move a name off parking.
- Domain registrar: the company whose parking page usually appears first.