When using Grounding with Google Search on gemini-3-flash-preview, the response’s groundingMetadata.webSearchQueries array sometimes contains empty strings, e.g.:
"webSearchQueries": ["", "best equity crowdfunding platforms 2026", "", "Wefunder vs Republic"]
The docs say Gemini 3 bills per executed search query, and also state “For billing purposes, we ignore the empty web search queries when counting unique queries.”
Can you confirm:
-
Are these empty
""entries excluded from billing (i.e. I should count only non-empty strings)? -
Why do empty strings appear in the array at all — is it expected, or a response artifact?
-
Is the billed count exposed anywhere authoritative in the response (a
usage-level field), so I don’t have to infer it by counting/filtering the array myself?
I’m estimating cost per call and want to make sure I’m not over- or under-counting.
HERE is an Example:
