The comparative study of a V-shaped tuned liquid column damper (VTLCD) and a U-shaped tuned liquid column damper (UTLCD) to minimize the dynamic response of a building under seismic loadings is investigated in this paper. A VTLCD is an improved form of a traditional UTLCD, in which the V-shaped liquid column of a VTLCD replaces the horizontal liquid column of a UTLCD. The equations of motion of an earthquake-excited MDOF building equipped with a VTLCD or UTLCD are established in this study. The operating conditions and geometric constraints of VTLCD and UTLCD are analyzed to build optimization problems. Herein, two main targets of optimization problems are considered, including the maximum relative displacement used to assess structural safety and the maximum absolute acceleration used for the purpose of human safety. Next, configurations of VTLCD and UTLCD are optimized based on data from the El Centro earthquake, with the peak ground acceleration (PGA) being 0.5 g, corresponding to each target mentioned above. Then, these configurations are tested under ten random earthquakes with different peak ground accelerations (PGAs). The present work results show that VTLCD has a more compact size compared with UTLCD. Furthermore, the vibration reduction capacity of VTLCD is higher than that of UTLCD (having the same mass as VTLCD) when the system is subjected to earthquake loads with different PGAs, especially for earthquakes with a high PGA.