Graph-sequential alignment and uniformity: Toward enhanced recommendation systems

Abstract

Graph-based and sequential methods are two popular recommendation paradigms, each excelling in its domain but lacking the ability to leverage signals from the other. To address this, we propose a novel method that integrates both approaches for enhanced performance. Our framework uses Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based and sequential recommenders as separate submodules while sharing a unified embedding space optimized jointly. To enable positive knowledge transfer, we design a loss function that enforces alignment and uniformity both within and across submodules. Experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms using either approach alone and achieves state-of-the-art results.

Type
Publication
Companion Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2025
Liangwei Yang
Liangwei Yang
Research Scientist at Salesforce Research

My research interests include Agent, Data Mining and Efficient Modeling.