A method and system for finding connected components of a graph using a parallel algorithm is provided. The connected nodes system performs a search algorithm in parallel to identify subgraphs of the graph in which the nodes of the subgraph are connected. The connected nodes system also identifies which subgraphs have at least one edge between their nodes. Thus, the connected nodes system effectively generates a hyper-graph with the subgraphs as hyper-nodes that are connected when subgraphs have at least one edge between their nodes. The connected nodes system may then perform a conventional connected component algorithm on the hyper-graph to identify the connected hyper-nodes, which effectively identifies the connected nodes of the underlying graphs.