One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for generating a product recommendation. During operation, the system receives graph data indicating vertices and edges of the graph. The vertices represent customers and products and the edges represent purchases. The system then receives a query of the graph to determine a product recommendation. Next, the system generates a finite-state machine (FSM) based on the query, executes the query, and determines whether a current state of the FSM is a traversal state. In response to the current state being a traversal state, the system generates a traversal FSM. The system then searches the traversal FSM for a nearest future traversal state, generates a bitmask for the future traversal state, and utilizes the generated bitmask when executing the future traversal state to generate the product recommendation.