Facebook will remove all automatically generated app profile pages early next year and give admins the option to transfer Likes to a relevant fan page, the company announced on its developer blog.

Developers will be relieved that all traffic to app profiles will be sent directly to apps and that they will no longer have to consider how to use the incongruous pages.

Although app profile pages look similar to fan pages, they do not allow admins to “Use Facebook as a Page” or receive notifications about user posts or comments. The dashboard to edit app profiles has a different UI than fan pages do, and insights are accessed differently.

Users, on the other hand, could be confused when Facebook’s search results directed them to app profile pages instead of the app itself. Users would sometimes Like or write on the Wall of the app profile page instead of the corresponding fan page, and since app admins were not notified of the activity, users were less likely to get a response.

In the next few weeks, admins will get a notification (see above) on their app profile prompting them to migrate Likes to an existing Facebook page. The name and category of both pages must match for Facebook to approve the merger. No content, including Wall posts or photos, will be transferred.

Facebook says it will delete all app profile pages on February 1, 2012.

For more details about related Graph API changes, see Facebook’s Developer Blog.