Table of content 

• Basic Usages Instructions
• Using WP Related Terms in a Search Query
• Refining Your Search in the code search engine
• Advanced Search Operators
• Synonyms

Basic Usages Instructions

wpUniverse is a code search engine built on google search. Basically what it does is to search your query in a highly targeted and high-quality list of sites that are related to WordPress development (web development in general, but mainly WordPress) instead of the entire interweb.

The best way to start the journey towards finding the best answer to your question is to start top to bottom. For example, if you are looking for information about how to use REST API, as opposed to regular Google search, where you would write how to use WP rest API you can type REST API in the search box, and check out the results.

You can also use refinements (listed below) to further narrow down your search. Next step you can use advanced search operators (listed below). If that didn’t produce a good answer, you can use a more specific search query e.g  REST API usages . You can start with the specific search query (wpUniverse works just like google search does), but then you might be missing some gems that might be the answer you are looking for.

Using WP Related Terms in a Search Query

As stated above, it’s best to start with a general term – “Rest API”. Because the index of sites the search uses to get your result is very targeted towards WP development and web development it is more likely that you will hit a relevant resource then if you would search on google. In most cases, you can omit “wp” or “woo” from your queries. But – sometimes you would need to use WP or WOO to find what you are looking for…

Refining Your Search in the code search engine

The refinement tabs (Snippets, tutorials, etc..) help you to get to your desired resource. The initial search results show “All” results – regardless of any refinement. If you want to search in a specific topic e.g a tutorial or a snippet, then click on the tab to narrow down the result to a specific topic.

In the “popular searches” section, You can see what other developers are searching, and test some relevant search queries. The “popular searches” phrases are based on actual search queries people searched. They can give you a clue as to what people are searching for in a particular subject.

Advanced Search Operators

Because the code search engine is based on google search, you can use advanced search operators to further refine the results. They are useful for further refining the results i.e eliminating some unwanted results of searching for a very specific subject. Here are some of the more useful ones.

• Exact match: "rest api". Will show results that contain the exact phrase “REST API”.
• OR: rest api OR graphql. Search for “rest api” OR “graphql” related content.
• Exclude terms  rest api -woocommerce. Will show results about rest API but without Woocommerce.
• Search for a specific filetype: filetype:pdf rest api. Will search for files of type pdf.
• Search in a specific site: wp query site:code.tutsplus.com. Will show results only from code.tutsplus.com.
• Exclude specific site:rest api -site:docs.woocommerce.com. Will exclude results from the domain docs.woocommerce.com
• Search terms in URL:inurl:rest-api. Will return only pages with “rest-api” in the URL.

You can combine search operators – e.g inurl:woocommerce site:code.tutsplus.com.

A Note about AND operator: Google defaults to AND anyway, so this is not very helpful. woocommerce "rest api" is equal to woocommerce  AND "rest api".

Synonyms

These are common search phrases and their equivalents. You can use either one – they will produce the same results

• woo – woocommerce
• wp – wordpress
• Ajax – Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
• basket – cart
• CPT – custom post type
• js – JavaScript
• oop – object orientate programming
• extension – plugin