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From my experience this is primarily used as an SEO play as you can link to your whole site with keyword-rich anchor text. It is also a great place to put "orphan" pages that dont get linked to elsewhere on the site like privacy policy, copyright, etc.

The increasing prevalence of such footers implies that there must be some research supporting their use, but I haven't yet encountered any. Have you? I think you're placing too much emphasis on the role of research as a driver of design principles. I would say that these things emerge from designer intuition, and proliferate if they don't cause serious ...

You mean like whitehouse.gov? Personally, I love the feel of a website when it has menus and links on top and bottom. When I'm on my phone, I'd hate to read a page, then have to scroll back to the top to find the navigation. Also, typically, the bottom contains links which are more descriptive, along with extra links such as sitemap, toa, and copyright ...