NameSilo Staff

Are Parked Domains Safe?

As the global competition for domain names surges, it is essential to register your desired domain name as soon as you find it to avoid purchasing it from someone else down the line. But what if, after paying a fee and acquiring a domain, you aren’t ready to take your website live? You will then own a parked domain. Below, we break down the risks and benefits of parked domains to help you leverage them safely and effectively.

What Is A Parked Domain? 

Parked domains are registered domains that are unconnected to a website or email hosting. These domain names aren’t currently in use but are instead “parked” for future use by owners or indefinitely to accumulate revenue.  Simply registering a domain name doesn’t automatically generate an online process. Instead, it secures a website name to which you can later connect your pages of content via a reliable hosting service. In the absence of a connected webpage, a domain is considered parked.  Typically, when someone surfing the internet lands on a parked domain, they will find either a monetized or non-monetized page. Monetized pages consist of ads that the domain name owner has set up to encourage traffic and generate revenue from ad content. Non-monetized pages might include an “Under Construction” or a “Coming Soon” image on a single-page site to indicate a website is in the works. 

Is it Safe to Own Parked Domains?

A common concern of those interested in domain parking is the safety of visiting and owning parked sites.  Just as they can with any website, bad and good actors can use parked domains to their advantage. Since the onset of the pandemic, phishing attacks overall have spiked. It’s no surprise, then, that domain parking trends have followed suit. As such, it is essential to rely upon legitimate parking services to ensure you remain aware of and can control what content your domain directs visitors to. Though parked domains can potentially pose a greater security risk for site visitors than traditional web pages, a 2020 study showed that only 1% of parked domains fell into malicious categories, including phishing and malware. The same study determined that 65% of parked domains were considered benign. Parked domains categorized as “malicious” by URL filtering showed that around a third of the “malicious” parked domains were parked for fewer than 10 days, whereas benign domains remained parked for 60-69 days. The majority of parked domains, however, do remain benign or eventually become legitimate websites.

Potential Risks of Parked Domains

A parked domain under construction.

All websites have the potential to face cyber threats at some point in their lifespan. It is important to take the necessary precautions to secure your websites, such as leveraging a secure web hosting provider who is familiar with threats you might face and can offer technical support. There are a few main risks to keep in mind when dealing with parked domains.

1. Redirection to malicious or unwanted landing pages

The main fear behind parked domains is the potential for redirection to malicious or unwanted landing pages, as well as the potential for pages to eventually become malicious. Certain parked domains display subtle warning signs from which you can infer their risk. For example, criminals who leverage domain parking often rely upon common misspellings to direct traffic to malicious sites with fake messages. Your control over your site will vary depending on which provider you decide to park your domain with.

NameSilo, for example, provides a wide range of customization options for both the appearance and the content of your parked domain. In addition, domain owners who work with NameSilo have the ability to determine both the meta title and description of a domain as well as configure the content, including the use of topical videos and tweets. 

2. Cybercriminals 

As with any website, both cybersecurity and cybercriminals can pose risks for parked domains. Selecting an experienced hosting service with a vast knowledge base and a dedicated support team is essential to deter cybercriminals from any website. 

3. Malware distribution

If a parking service doesn’t have the means of or interest in filtering malicious advertisers, site visitors can face exposure to threats including malware distribution, potentially unwanted program (PUP) distribution and phishing scams, particularly the distribution of grayware. With NameSilo, you can select the content of your parked domains to mitigate the above concerns for visitors.

Benefits of Owning Parked Domains

Parked domains with ads.

Parked domains can serve a variety of functions and thus can offer substantial benefits to their owners. 

Domain Name Protection

If you have selected a domain name for your business but do not yet have content for your site, parking the domain name can prevent others from acquiring it for themselves. Entrepreneurs or small businesses developing websites offline should still make sure to purchase their desired domains as soon as possible. Once the site is ready, they can then connect it to the DNS and publish it.

Alias Domains 

Parked domains can serve as valuable alias domains. Alias domains are additional domain names that point to the same files as the primary domain where your website lives. Alias domains exist as alternatives to the primary domain of a website yet contain no content of their own. You can purchase multiple alias domains with similar names to that of your primary domain and park them. As a result, they will efficiently redirect typo traffic to the primary domain.

For example, if your primary domain is mywebsite.com, you can set up an alias domain at mywebsit.net. If a visitor mistakenly navigates to your parked alias domain, they will see the content of your primary domain at the URL of your alias domain.  Additionally, if you want to avoid malicious actors acquiring similar domain names or spellings to yours, purchasing alias domains can safely redirect traffic to your primary domain.

Advertising and Investing

If you own a domain that you’re not currently using for a website, domain parking can be a great way to make the domain pay for itself.  Particularly for domains that have been linked from other websites or were formerly successful sites, parked domains can attract traffic and generate profits if their owner fills the page with ads. Parking services can increase traffic and revenue by showing users ads that you then receive payment for based on the number of ad clicks. Additionally, parking services can redirect users to an advertiser’s website page, from which you will get paid based on the number of visits. Websites can also include non-profit ads to help a cause or generate buzz around a topic without economically benefiting from it.

Domain registration and parking have also served as reliable forms of investment since domain registration first emerged. As such, domain parking goes hand in hand with domain flipping. With domain flipping, investors purchase low-cost, promising domain names that they later resell at a significantly higher price.  Domain investors learn to buy and sell parked domains at the correct times to find the highest bidders.

For those interested in acquiring domains but who lack the time to run and maintain websites, domain flipping can serve as a useful way to recoup investments with little to no effort. The best domains for flipping typically include expired domains, short domains, local domains (such as those ending with extensions like .UK or .DE) and new domains.

Flipped domains can serve as a reliable and low-maintenance investment for entrepreneurs and business owners. If you thoughtfully invest in domain names and hold onto them, you will likely be able to sell them for a much higher price down the road. 

Safely Park Your Domains with NameSilo

 

Using a registrar with a solid reputation is essential to safely park domains. NameSilo has proactive solutions in place and can provide countermeasures to mitigate or nullify the security risks of parked domains.  NameSilo’s domain parking process is fast and secure. We publish a miniature site containing your domain name and relevant content. If someone types your domain name into their browser, they will arrive safely at the minisite we’ve set up. Domain parking with NameSilo is free, customizable, and practical.   Want to see for yourself how you can benefit from safely parked domains? Contact NameSilo today!

About the Author:

NameSilo Staff

The NameSilo staff of writers worked together on this post. It was a combination of efforts from our passionate writers that produce content to educate and provide insights for all our readers.

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