diff --git a/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/aggregations/bucket/terms/GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator.java b/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/aggregations/bucket/terms/GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator.java
index 5ed899408ab40..505faf4fbdc10 100644
--- a/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/aggregations/bucket/terms/GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator.java
+++ b/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/aggregations/bucket/terms/GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator.java
@@ -37,6 +37,8 @@
 import org.apache.lucene.index.LeafReaderContext;
 import org.apache.lucene.index.SortedDocValues;
 import org.apache.lucene.index.SortedSetDocValues;
+import org.apache.lucene.search.MatchAllDocsQuery;
+import org.apache.lucene.search.Weight;
 import org.apache.lucene.util.ArrayUtil;
 import org.apache.lucene.util.BytesRef;
 import org.apache.lucene.util.PriorityQueue;
@@ -70,6 +72,7 @@
 import java.util.function.Function;
 import java.util.function.LongPredicate;
 import java.util.function.LongUnaryOperator;
+import java.util.logging.Logger;
 
 import static org.opensearch.search.aggregations.InternalOrder.isKeyOrder;
 import static org.apache.lucene.index.SortedSetDocValues.NO_MORE_ORDS;
@@ -80,11 +83,16 @@
  * @opensearch.internal
  */
 public class GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator extends AbstractStringTermsAggregator {
+
+    // testing only - will remove
+    protected Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(GlobalOrdinalsStringTermsAggregator.class.getName());
     protected final ResultStrategy<?, ?, ?> resultStrategy;
     protected final ValuesSource.Bytes.WithOrdinals valuesSource;
 
     private final LongPredicate acceptedGlobalOrdinals;
     private final long valueCount;
+
+    private Weight weight;
     private final GlobalOrdLookupFunction lookupGlobalOrd;
     protected final CollectionStrategy collectionStrategy;
     protected int segmentsWithSingleValuedOrds = 0;
@@ -142,8 +150,24 @@ String descriptCollectionStrategy() {
         return collectionStrategy.describe();
     }
 
+    public void setWeight(Weight weight) {
+        this.weight = weight;
+    }
+
     @Override
     public LeafBucketCollector getLeafCollector(LeafReaderContext ctx, LeafBucketCollector sub) throws IOException {
+        assert weight != null; // if weight is invoked, then we must have weight initialized
+
+        if (weight.count(ctx) == 0) {
+            logger.info("O Weight count");
+            return LeafBucketCollector.NO_OP_COLLECTOR;
+        } else if (weight.count(ctx) == ctx.reader().maxDoc() && weight.getQuery() instanceof MatchAllDocsQuery) {
+            // no deleted documents & top level query matches everything
+            //iterate over the terms - doc frequency for each termsEnum directly
+            logger.info("No deleted documents in leaf");
+            // return appropriate LeafCollector
+        }
+
         SortedSetDocValues globalOrds = valuesSource.globalOrdinalsValues(ctx);
         collectionStrategy.globalOrdsReady(globalOrds);
         SortedDocValues singleValues = DocValues.unwrapSingleton(globalOrds);
diff --git a/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/internal/ContextIndexSearcher.java b/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/internal/ContextIndexSearcher.java
index b042f3cf41d61..cc4ff0e9cd301 100644
--- a/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/internal/ContextIndexSearcher.java
+++ b/server/src/main/java/org/opensearch/search/internal/ContextIndexSearcher.java
@@ -386,6 +386,11 @@ public BulkScorer bulkScorer(LeafReaderContext context) throws IOException {
                         return null;
                     }
                 }
+
+                @Override
+                public int count(LeafReaderContext context) throws IOException {
+                    return weight.count(context);
+                }
             };
         } else {
             return weight;