parking

Parking is holding a registered domain while doing nothing with it—no website, no mail, no DNS records pointing anywhere. The domain just sits in your registrar account, ready to use later or sell. Common reasons: speculate on resale value, reserve a brand, wait for a project to launch, or keep a typo variant off-market. Parking has a bad reputation because squatters abuse it, but legitimate use cases exist—you buy a domain, life happens, you park it for three years. The registrar doesn't care; they collect renewal fees either way. Some registrars offer "parking pages" (ad-heavy landing pages that generate revenue for the registrar, not you). Don't expect earnings from that. If you're parking speculatively, know that most parked domains never sell. If you're parking defensively (protecting your brand variants or securing a future project domain), keep your WHOIS private and your renewal auto-enabled—let it lapse and you lose it. Parking is legal. Domain squatting and cybersquatting (parking with intent to extort or mislead) are not.