Reports: Broken Links, Redirects, and Duplicate Content in BearAudit

Beyond per-page verifications (meta tags, H1, canonical, etc.), BearAudit’s Reports view surfaces three kinds of site-wide issues: broken links, redirects, and duplicate content groups. Each has its own tab so you can fix them in order of impact.

Broken links

The Broken links tab lists links that point to URLs which returned a non-2xx status (e.g. 404, 500) when BearAudit checked them. For each row you see:

• Source page — The crawled page that contains the link.
• Target URL — The URL that’s broken.
• Status — The HTTP status returned (e.g. 404).

Use it to remove or update broken internal and external links, redirect old URLs, or fix typos. You can export the list to CSV for your team or a ticket system. Fixing broken links improves UX and avoids passing signals to dead pages.

Redirects

The Redirects tab lists redirect chains (or single redirects) discovered during the crawl. BearAudit tracks:

• From → To — Which URL redirects to which.
• Chain length — Long chains (e.g. A → B → C → D) can slow crawlers and users and dilute link equity.

Shorten chains where possible: point internal links and canonicals to the final URL so that one redirect is enough. This aligns with the HTTP and redirect checks in Verifications; Reports gives you the full list in one place.

Duplicate content groups

When BearAudit finds pages that share the same or very similar main text (e.g. same body content, different URLs), it groups them in Duplicate content groups. For each group you see:

• URLs in the group — All pages that belong to that duplicate set.
• Representative content — So you can decide which URL should be canonical and which to noindex, merge, or remove.

Use it to consolidate thin or duplicate pages, set canonicals, or remove low-value URLs. This complements the thin content and canonical checks in Verifications.

Export and workflow

• CSV export — Each report tab can export its current list to CSV (with pagination so you can export in chunks if needed). Handy for assigning tasks or feeding into other tools.
• Workflow — After a crawl, open Reports, fix broken links first, then shorten redirect chains, then resolve duplicate groups. Re-crawl to confirm and to refresh the Action plan with updated metrics.

Reports sit alongside the dashboard and Verifications: the dashboard gives you counts and health at a glance; Verifications give you per-page SEO issues; Reports give you link and content issues across the whole property.

For short definitions of these concepts, see our glossary: redirect chains and duplicate content.