A parked domain is one that is registered but has no real site. In place of content it shows a placeholder: a holding page from the registrar, a page of adverts, or a notice that the name is for sale. People park a domain when they own it but aren’t using it, or when a domain has lapsed and been picked up to be resold.
Why a link to one is a problem
Visitors who follow a link to it land on an advert or a sales page, which looks bad for the page that sent them. The link also still passes your ranking credit to it. And a parked domain is a hand-over waiting to happen: whoever buys it can put anything there, and your page will send readers to it. For that reason it is the first priority in a report.
How Link Signals recognises one
| Sign | What a scan sees |
|---|---|
| It points at a known parking service | The address the link ends up on is on a list of parking providers, such as Sedo, Dan or HugeDomains. |
| A short page selling the domain | A thin page whose title or opening text offers the domain for sale, using phrases such as “buy this domain”. |
The wording is deliberately narrow, and is only trusted on short pages, so an article about buying domains is not mistaken for a parked page. A parked page is reported as Needs review with the reason that the original site is gone and the domain is available to buy. It is checked before anything else is read, so no further judgement is made about the content.
Domains that are parked are checked again on every monitoring check rather than reused, because a parked name can be sold and rebuilt at any time.
Common misunderstandings
- Parked is not the same as expired. A parked domain is registered. An expired domain has lapsed and may soon be released. They are separate priorities.
- Not every parked domain is detected. A long page, or a parking service not on the list, can be missed.
- A parked page isn’t harmful in itself. The risk lies in what your link does for it, and in what it might become.
A parked page is the first priority in a report. See parked domains.
Questions
What should I do?
Replace the link with a working page that serves the same purpose, or remove it. If you linked to the site as a source, find where the content has moved.
Is a newly registered domain the same thing?
No. See new domains for links to domains registered in the last 30 days.
How this counts in your LinkSignal
A link to a parked page is counted in the links to parked pages row of your site’s external LinkSignal. See how the score is worked out for the points and the LinkSignal overview for the other rows. LinkSignal is Link Signals’ own metric, worked out only from what this tool finds, and it is not connected to any search engine or third-party score.
Run a scan and find where these show up on your own site.
