# When Do LLMs Help With Node Classification? A Comprehensive Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00829 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00829/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 49 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11692/) (2019)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [Open Graph Benchmark: Datasets for Machine Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00687/) (2020)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Text Embeddings by Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03533/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Semi-Supervised Learning with Graph Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08861/) (2016)
- [Masked Label Prediction: Unified Message Passing Model for Semi-Supervised Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03509/) (2020)
- [Reasoning on Graphs: Faithful and Interpretable Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01061/) (2023)
- [Exploring the Potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03393/) (2023)
- [Wiki-CS: A Wikipedia-Based Benchmark for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02901/) (2020)
- [Can Language Models Solve Graph Problems in Natural Language?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10037/) (2023)
- [One for All: Towards Training One Graph Model for All Classification Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00149/) (2023)
- [GraphGPT: Graph Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13023/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models on Graphs: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02783/) (2023)
- [Learning on Large-scale Text-attributed Graphs via Variational Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14709/) (2022)
- [Graph-less Neural Networks: Teaching Old MLPs New Tricks via Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08727/) (2021)
- [Harnessing Explanations: LLM-to-LM Interpreter for Enhanced Text-Attributed Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19523/) (2023)
- [Let Your Graph Do the Talking: Encoding Structured Data for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05862/) (2024)
- [GraphText: Graph Reasoning in Text Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01089/) (2023)
- [GraphLLM: Boosting Graph Reasoning Ability of Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05845/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Graph Meets Large Language Model: Progress and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12399/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Towards Graph Foundation Models: A Transferability Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09363/) (2025)
- [Actions Speak Louder than Prompts: A Large-Scale Study of LLMs for Graph Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18487/) (2025)
- [GNN-as-Judge: Unleashing the Power of LLMs for Graph Learning with GNN Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08553/) (2026)
- [When Structure Doesn't Help: LLMs Do Not Read Text-Attributed Graphs as Effectively as We Expected](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16767/) (2025)
- [Learning to Rank Critical Road Segments via Heterogeneous Graphs with Origin-Destination Flow Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19199/) (2025)
- [Are LLMs Better GNN Helpers? Rethinking Robust Graph Learning under Deficiencies with Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01910/) (2025)
- [Robustness in Text-Attributed Graph Learning: Insights, Trade-offs, and New Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17185/) (2025)
- [Learning Hierarchical Knowledge in Text-Rich Networks with Taxonomy-Informed Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08159/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Efficient Graph Coarsening via a Non-Selfishness Principle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13021/) (2026)
- [Detecting Differences Is Not Understanding Structure: Large Language Models Fail at Graph Isomorphism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09484/) (2026)
- [Call Neighbours Yourself: Graph Walks with Destination-Conditioned On-Policy Self-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29588/) (2026)
- [Improving LLM Reasoning with Homophily-aware Structural and Semantic Text-Attributed Graph Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08187/) (2026)
- [Scaling GraphLLM with Bilevel-Optimized Sparse Querying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09038/) (2026)
- [Exploring Concept Subspace for Self-explainable Text-Attributed Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11986/) (2026)
- [HopRank: Self-Supervised LLM Preference-Tuning on Graphs for Few-Shot Node Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17271/) (2026)
- [Beyond the Golden Teacher: Enhancing Graph Learning through LLM-GNN Co-teaching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11583/) (2026)
- [GraspLLM: Towards Zero-Shot Generalization on Text-Attributed Graphs with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11898/) (2026)
- [LLM Features Can Hurt GNNs: Concatenation Interference on Homophilous Graph Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17579/) (2026)
- [GLIP: Graph and LLM Joint Pretraining for Graph-Level Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29773/) (2026)
- [Semi-Supervised Text-Attributed Graph Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20477/) (2026)
- [ZeroGAR: Benchmarking the Adversarial Robustness of Zero-Shot Graph Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33314/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Node classification is a fundamental task in graph analysis, with broad applications across various fields. Recent breakthroughs in Large Language Models (LLMs) have enabled LLM-based approaches for this task. Although many studies demonstrate the impressive performance of LLM-based methods, the lack of clear design guidelines may hinder their practical application. In this work, we aim to establish such guidelines through a fair and systematic comparison of these algorithms. As a first step, we developed LLMNodeBed, a comprehensive codebase and testbed for node classification using LLMs. It includes 10 homophilic datasets, 4 heterophilic datasets, 8 LLM-based algorithms, 8 classic baselines, and 3 learning paradigms. Subsequently, we conducted extensive experiments, training and evaluating over 2,700 models, to determine the key settings (e.g., learning paradigms and homophily) and components (e.g., model size and prompt) that affect performance. Our findings uncover 8 insights, e.g., (1) LLM-based methods can significantly outperform traditional methods in a semi-supervised setting, while the advantage is marginal in a supervised setting; (2) Graph Foundation Models can beat open-source LLMs but still fall short of strong LLMs like GPT-4o in a zero-shot setting. We hope that the release of LLMNodeBed, along with our insights, will facilitate reproducible research and inspire future studies in this field. Codes and datasets are released at hrefhttps://llmnodebed.github.io/texttthttps://llmnodebed.github.io/.