Node embedding techniques learn vector representations of nodes in a graph that can be used for downstream machine learning tasks like classification, clustering, and link prediction. DeepWalk uses random walks to generate sequences of nodes that are treated similarly to sentences, and learns embeddings by predicting nodes using their neighbors, like word2vec. It does not incorporate node features or labels. Node2vec extends DeepWalk by introducing a biased random walk to learn embeddings, addressing some limitations of DeepWalk while maintaining scalability.