US Patent 10152557 Efficient similarity ranking for bipartite graphs

Systems and methods offer an efficient approach to computing similarity rankings in bipartite graphs. An example system includes at least one processor and memory storing a bipartite graph having a first set and a second set of nodes, with nodes in the first set being connected to nodes in the second set by edges. The memory also stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to assign each node in the second set to one of a plurality of categories and, for each of the plurality of categories, generate a subgraph. The subgraph comprises of a subset of nodes in the first set and edges linking the nodes in the subset, where the nodes in the subset are selected based on connection to a node in the second set that is assigned to the category. The system uses the subgraph to respond to queries.