Penalized???

[neophytemedia]

Hi,
we have a new client who requires 2 domain names pointing to the same web site. While we are perfectly aware that duplicate content usually gets you banned I just need an answer.
Will search engines still penalize you if you're having 2 domain names with the company name???
E.g. companyname.com / company-name.com

No keywords are used in these domain names and the only concern of my client is the brand recognition of their name.
Any suggestion is appreciated.

[adore]

As a result of having duplicate content is getting a penalty on one of the sites. It means, that the affected site (in this case - one of the domains) is ranked significantly lower.
I don't think you need to worry - just make all the optimization with one domain and don't worry about the other.

[Mel]

The usual method of handling this is to pick which domain you want to be indexed, and then point the other domain (often called parking) to that domain, so that viewers can use both URLs will reach the site, but only one is indexed.

If you somehow end up with two domains pointing to identical content one will be penalized.