How to combine two get_users() array?

Edit: to clarify, the answer to

How can I merge them together for results?

Is that you really can’t, not without a lot of custom SQL and using filters. The complexity of going that route far outweighs any perceived benefits and wouldn’t be very future-proof. I’d recommend using the solution below and putting it all into a method that you can call to get what you need.

Original Answer

I tested this locally and was able to get two sets of results – from there, I passed them through a callback in array_filter to remove the duplicate entries:

$q1 = get_users(array(
    'fields' => 'all',
    'role'   => 'contact',
    'search' => '*'.esc_attr( $search_term ).'*',
));

$q2 = get_users(array(
    'fields' => 'all',
    'role'   => 'contact',
    'meta_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'OR',
        array(
            'key'     => 'first_name',
            'value'   => $search_term,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ),
        array(
            'key'     => 'last_name',
            'value'   => $search_term,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ),
        array(
            'key' => 'location',
            'value' => $search_term ,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        )
    )
));

$results = array_merge( $q1, $q2 );
$results = array_filter( $results, function( $user ) {
    static $found_users = [];

    if ( in_array( $user->ID, $found_users, true ) ) {
        return false;
    }

    $found_users[] = $user->ID;
    return true;
} );

The static array is persisted over each call to the closure, allowing the code to keep track of which users have already been processed. If a user’s ID is in the $found_users array, we return false which removes the current element from the array.

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