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Main Authors: Wang, Boyan, Feng, Weijie, Huang, Jinyang, Guo, Dan, Liu, Zhi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17640
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author Wang, Boyan
Feng, Weijie
Huang, Jinyang
Guo, Dan
Liu, Zhi
author_facet Wang, Boyan
Feng, Weijie
Huang, Jinyang
Guo, Dan
Liu, Zhi
contents Unsupervised plain graph alignment (UPGA) aims to align corresponding nodes across two graphs without any auxiliary information. Existing UPGA methods rely on structural consistency while neglecting the inherent structural differences in real-world graphs, leading to biased node representations. Moreover, their one-shot alignment strategies lack mechanisms to correct erroneous matches arising from inaccurate anchor seeds. To address these issues, this paper proposes IterAlign, a novel parameter-free and efficient UPGA method. First, a simple yet powerful representation generation method based on heat diffusion is introduced to capture multi-level structural characteristics, mitigating the over-reliance on structural consistency and generating stable node representations. Two complementary node alignment strategies are then adopted to balance alignment accuracy and efficiency across graphs of varying scales. By alternating between representation generation and node alignment, IterAlign iteratively rectifies biases in nodes representations and refines the alignment process, leading to superior and robust alignment performance. Extensive experiments on three public benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed IterAlign outperforms state-of-the-art UPGA approaches with a lower computational overhead, but also showcases the ability to approach the theoretical accuracy upper bound of unsupervised plain graph alignment task.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_17640
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Empowering Iterative Graph Alignment Using Heat Diffusion
Wang, Boyan
Feng, Weijie
Huang, Jinyang
Guo, Dan
Liu, Zhi
Social and Information Networks
Unsupervised plain graph alignment (UPGA) aims to align corresponding nodes across two graphs without any auxiliary information. Existing UPGA methods rely on structural consistency while neglecting the inherent structural differences in real-world graphs, leading to biased node representations. Moreover, their one-shot alignment strategies lack mechanisms to correct erroneous matches arising from inaccurate anchor seeds. To address these issues, this paper proposes IterAlign, a novel parameter-free and efficient UPGA method. First, a simple yet powerful representation generation method based on heat diffusion is introduced to capture multi-level structural characteristics, mitigating the over-reliance on structural consistency and generating stable node representations. Two complementary node alignment strategies are then adopted to balance alignment accuracy and efficiency across graphs of varying scales. By alternating between representation generation and node alignment, IterAlign iteratively rectifies biases in nodes representations and refines the alignment process, leading to superior and robust alignment performance. Extensive experiments on three public benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed IterAlign outperforms state-of-the-art UPGA approaches with a lower computational overhead, but also showcases the ability to approach the theoretical accuracy upper bound of unsupervised plain graph alignment task.
title Empowering Iterative Graph Alignment Using Heat Diffusion
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17640