An online concierge system generates a graph connecting items with attributes of the items and other items. Hence, the graph includes nodes corresponding to attributes and nodes corresponding to items, with an item connected to attributes of the item in the graph. Example attributes include a brand, a category, a department, or any other suitable information about the item. When the online concierge system receives a search query to identify one or more items from a customer, the online concierge system parses the search query into combinations of terms and compares different combinations of terms to the graph to determine connections between different combinations of terms in the graph. Based on measures of connectedness between combinations of terms and connections in the graph, items are identified from one or more combinations of terms. Information about the identified items is presented to the customer.