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Hi Braunna, It sounds like you deleted pages, then remade them. It is great you're keeping up with the freshness of the site but for search engine purposes you should have simply updated the current page with fresh content, or remade the page then 301'd  the old page to the new page. In general you should try to avoid deleting pages or remaking the same page with a new url unless there is a reason greater than content driving the decision. Such as a new CMS (content management system, Joomla, WP, OSC etc..), switching server side scripting (php to asp), or overhauling navigation and architecture. If there was a case of a the page simply being completely useless and you are removing it completely then 404 would be correct. If you are seeing any duplicate content issues in this case it is likely because the search engines have not de-indexed the old page or it is still in their cache. Google can help you with removing cached versions and forcing de-indexing. I hope that hit the correct answer for you. Happy New Year

Breadcrumbs add great value to the pages and helps pass PR around the site. However, since you are going around the CMS, you better keep the links under tight control to make sure the breadcrumbs don't eventually lead to 404 pages. Also, I strongly suggest to use the breadcrumb microformat for an enhanced search display in Google search results.

Thank you Moosa and Doug - your answers were very thoughtful and helpful! Do you believe that reducing the # of footer links will have a positive impact by providing additional link juice to the important pages that I keep?