What is Pointer-chasing and how it is related to BFS

While reading a PPT on BFS (Breadth First Searching) I found that BFS can be used where we have " pointer-chasing" . What exactly is a pointer chasing and how is it related to BFS?

Pointers imply a graph on your data. BFS (breadth first search) is an algorithm to search in that graph.

Pointer chasing is just another word for following lots of pointers.

From the hardware perspective (CPU), pointer-chasing is bad for performance because memory reads are in effect serialized in the CPU (ie no ILP). You can't start a read (ie a load instr) until the prior one is done (since the prior load gives us the address for the next load and so on....).