PathRank: a novel node ranking measure on a heterogeneous graph for recommender systems

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel random-walk based node ranking measure, PathRank, which is defined on a heterogeneous graph by extending the Personalized PageRank algorithm. Not only can our proposed measure exploit the semantics behind the different types of nodes and edges in a heterogeneous graph, but also it can emulate various recommendation semantics such as collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and their combinations. The experimental results show that PathRank can produce more various and effective recommendation results compared to existing approaches.