What is Domain Parking?
A parked domain is a domain that is registered, but not yet developed into a website or service. This may be to reserve the domain name for future development or if the domain name has been acquired purely for resale reasons.

Domain parking can be classified either as monetized domain parking or non-monetized domain parking. Non-monetized domain parking is for example the default “Coming soon” “Under Construction” or “Parked at” parking page that the domain registrar at where the domain name is registered automatically sets the nameservers to when you register a new domain name. Monetized domain parking however shows the visitors to the domain advertisements based on keywords related to the domain name. When a visitor clicks through one of these links, the owner of the domain receives a certain fee, depending on the price the advertiser pays for the link. This is the type of domain parking we will concentrate on in this article.

Domain parking is a multi-million dollar industry, and there are several companies that offer domain parking solutions to owners of domain names that are not yet developed into websites. Most domain parking services offer free accounts, but you also find services that cost a one-time sign up fee or a monthly fee. These domain parking services however often give you more options when it comes to design and content on the parked domain, so the site easier can get higher page rankings in search engine and therefore generate a higher traffic volume.  

When search engine generated or type-in traffic sends visitors to a parked or minimally developed domain name this works as follows:

• The domain name will usually resolve to a web page containing advertising listings and links.
• These links will be targeted to the predicted interests of the visitor and may change dynamically based on the results that visitors click on.
• Usually the domain holder is paid based on how many links have been visited (e.g. pay per click) and on how beneficial those visits have been.
• The keywords for any given domain name provide clues as to the intent of the visitor before arriving.

Expired domains that were formerly websites are also sought for parked domain monetization. A domain that was used as a website but is not renewed by the owner so that it expires will still maintain most of its prior inbound links. These types of domains usually attract the largest amount of visitor traffic initially after being reregistered. As website operators and search engines begin to remove the former inbound links, the traffic to the parked domain will decline. The process of re-registering expired names is known as dropcatching.

Parked domains are usually categorized as “one click” or “two click” domains. (Also known as one page or two page parked domains.)
This refers to if the visitors come directly to the ads on the landing page of the domain or if they must click on a category keyword before the ads are shown. On domains with a 'one-click' implementation, a click on a keyword is not necessary to generate ads. The ads are targeted based on the domain name. Domains with 'two-click' implementations require a click on a keyword or a keyword search to generate ads.

Within the domain parking industry there are several companies that actively seek out domain name holders and act as middlemen to serve advertisements on parking pages. The parking pages are propagated automatically on a domain holder's web property when they either change the name servers or forward the URL.