Just because it's parked (in a WWW sense) doesn't mean it's unused. I've got a few domains that are used for Azure, Google Workspace, email, or just testing stuff. I don't really have any interest in setting up a web site for those.

Same here. More than half of my domains are used for email canaries. The other half are used as spam tarpits in addition to testing things as you mentioned. I have http on 3 of them and most of that usage is hidden wildcards using strict-SNI and not publicly accessible.

The page links to its source for that 70%, and the source says… 52.95%

I wonder what counts as a parked domain. If you use flarabba.com and have flarabba.de/fre/es/it/… but don't use them, are those detected as parked?

That’s the % of parked .wiki domains. E.g.: if you change it to “.live/Parked Domains Percentage“ you get 78.29%.

I assume they just queried the whole nTLD list one at a time and averaged out the %s based on domain count.

It is non trivial to identify parked domains, so I wouldn't trust that number. Especially since their linked source itself states something else.

Is there a DNS entry at all? Is the server returning 200/400/500? Could it just be a temporary error? Maybe there's an auth wall? Or the site is used behind some corporate firewall or VPN? What if it's 200 with a "buy this page" response? Or some spam site entirely?

This. I have a handful of domains, most of which are effectively unused at the moment -- but I have them point at one of my other live sites. They're "parked", but I don't think anyone could know that without asking me.

Most are the registrar's parking page.

Wow, I would've actually guessed more like 95%...I think the value of domains has dropped over the past decade, so people are less willing to pay for dormant ones.

I think most aren't due to people trying to sell. Most registrars put up a parking page automatically, and many (myself included) buy domains with the idea that it'd be a cool site and never circle back (and have auto-renew on).

Yeeeah.. I finally let go of a handful of “haha this is great. How was this not already taken?” Domains at the behest of my wife lol.

I have had a nice vanity domain for about twenty years for a few bits and private bobs but someone has just bought the same name with an s on the end and launched a right wing podcast. I get bits of their email occasionally. So now if I ever do anything interesting with mine I may get shouted at for infringing their business name... Grrr. Still they may fade away, fingers crossed