Running the grounding examples, grounding metadata that is returned is often empty, even when the model clearly did perform grounding (i.e. it gives correct recent information). It seems completely random, and happens in ~20% of the calls. Anyone else experienced this?

I cannot replicate this with the examples given in the docs anymore. Here is my code: prompt = "When is the next total solar eclipse in the United States?" client = genai.Client(api_key=os.environ.get("GEMINI_API_KEY")) model = "gemini-2.5-pro-preview-03-25" contents = [ types.Content( …

Bumping this to say that the problem still persists.

Hi @ivan_b , Welcome to the forum!! Without asking for json output, did you get the issue?? I am seeing with json output prompt, grounding_chunks are not present but search results are there with this line of code “display(HTML(response.candidates[0].grounding_metadata.search_entry_point.rendered_c…

Yes, search queries are always returned. However, as far as I can tell, whenever output consists only of a code block, there aren’t any grounding supports or chunks returned. When I instruct the model not to output the JSON (or XML) inside a code block, then it seems to work. However, model often ig…

I have similar issues. For my case, grounding_metadata was never empty. But grouding_chunks and grounding_supports (attributes of grouding_metadata) are returned as None most of the time. I haven’t tested it thoroughly, but I got proper lengthy outcome at first time. And it returns None afterwards, …

Still have the same issue with both gemini 2.0 flash and gemini 2.5 pro even without multitooling. grounding_metadata is None

I second this. been having the same issue with groundingSupports and groundingChunks not return in either cases that the output consists only of a code block or some text and then code block. When I got text only output then there are groundingSupports and groundingChunks

I am having a similar behavior, grounding_chunks are returned empty but grounding_supports do have data that links to non existing chunks. Here is an example: "grounding_metadata": { "grounding_chunks": null, "grounding_supports": [ { "confidence_scores":…

Seeing the same issue as above (grounding_chunks being empty but grounding_support.grounding_chunk_indices pointing to an index) and it makes relying on Gemini grounding responses very difficult. Anecdotally, this seems to occur more frequently when in a multi-turn conversation, I imagine because t…

Seeing the same issue with Google Maps tool: [image] Gemini with Google Maps grounding and widget enable does not return grounding chunks or widget token Gemini API hi there! we’re developing an app using Gemini API with Google Maps grounding but are having a…

Search Grounding metadata is empty even when search was performed

Gemini API

kyryl January 28, 2026, 6:34am 20

Seeing the same issue with Google Maps tool:

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Search Grounding metadata is empty even when search was performed

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