'How to exclude empty cells in excel structured references

Context: I am using search & count queries to see if a table entry matches with any of the terms captured in a separate table as one column

Eg: COUNT(SEARCH(TableToSearch[ColumnWithSearchTerms],[@FieldInCurrentTable]))

The problem I have is that if the column with search terms has empty cells, that breaks my count + search technique.

Is there a way to exclude non empty rows while using structured references in excel?

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