Primal has a caching server that calculates things like how many followers a person has and they use that to sort the search results. In nos.social we don’t, yet, have that, so we sort by mutual followers. Both do a great job at finding the right nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 but overall popularity isn’t as good when you’re looking for your friend Matt. For new users who don’t have anybody then the overall popularity is better than mutual follows.
Coracle calculates and displays a kind of Web of Trust (WoT) score for each person which is nice.
All of which would be improved if we had a good way to say, this is the Matt who you’re following on twitter/mastodon/instagram or have the email / phone number of.