What is the most efficient way of finding a path through a small world graph?

Question

I have a sea of weighted nodes with edges linking clusters of nodes together. This graph follows the typical small world layout.

I wish to find a path finding algori

Answer 1

The most commonly used algorithm for this problem is A* (A Star), which is a generalized Dijkstra's algorithm search with added heuristics - the purpose of the heuristics is to direct the search towards the search goal so that typical searches finish faster.

This algorithm has many variants, derived versions and improvements, Google search or the Wikipedia page should be a good starting point.