diff --git a/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/action/count/CountRequest.java b/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/action/count/CountRequest.java
index 7bdd6cc9ebb..e2b25f50c1b 100644
--- a/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/action/count/CountRequest.java
+++ b/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/action/count/CountRequest.java
@@ -22,7 +22,6 @@ package org.elasticsearch.action.count;
 import org.apache.lucene.util.UnicodeUtil;
 import org.elasticsearch.ElasticSearchGenerationException;
 import org.elasticsearch.action.ActionRequestValidationException;
-import org.elasticsearch.action.Actions;
 import org.elasticsearch.action.support.broadcast.BroadcastOperationRequest;
 import org.elasticsearch.action.support.broadcast.BroadcastOperationThreading;
 import org.elasticsearch.client.Requests;
@@ -86,9 +85,6 @@ public class CountRequest extends BroadcastOperationRequest {
 
     @Override public ActionRequestValidationException validate() {
         ActionRequestValidationException validationException = super.validate();
-        if (querySource == null) {
-            validationException = Actions.addValidationError("query is missing", validationException);
-        }
         return validationException;
     }
 
diff --git a/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/service/InternalIndexShard.java b/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/service/InternalIndexShard.java
index f71e9191340..c917c81df65 100644
--- a/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/service/InternalIndexShard.java
+++ b/modules/elasticsearch/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/service/InternalIndexShard.java
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ import org.elasticsearch.common.Strings;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.inject.Inject;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.io.FastByteArrayOutputStream;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.lucene.Lucene;
+import org.elasticsearch.common.lucene.search.Queries;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.metrics.MeanMetric;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.unit.TimeValue;
@@ -367,7 +368,12 @@ public class InternalIndexShard extends AbstractIndexShardComponent implements I
     @Override public long count(float minScore, byte[] querySource, int querySourceOffset, int querySourceLength,
                                 @Nullable String[] filteringAliases, String... types) throws ElasticSearchException {
         readAllowed();
-        Query query = queryParserService.parse(querySource, querySourceOffset, querySourceLength).query();
+        Query query;
+        if (querySourceLength == 0) {
+            query = Queries.MATCH_ALL_QUERY;
+        } else {
+            query = queryParserService.parse(querySource, querySourceOffset, querySourceLength).query();
+        }
         // wrap it in filter, cache it, and constant score it
         // Don't cache it, since it might be very different queries each time...
 //        query = new ConstantScoreQuery(filterCache.cache(new QueryWrapperFilter(query)));
diff --git a/modules/test/integration/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/document/DocumentActionsTests.java b/modules/test/integration/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/document/DocumentActionsTests.java
index dd07745770e..9ac8832e935 100644
--- a/modules/test/integration/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/document/DocumentActionsTests.java
+++ b/modules/test/integration/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/document/DocumentActionsTests.java
@@ -231,6 +231,13 @@ public class DocumentActionsTests extends AbstractNodesTests {
             assertThat(countResponse.count(), equalTo(0l));
             assertThat(countResponse.successfulShards(), equalTo(0));
             assertThat(countResponse.failedShards(), equalTo(5));
+
+            // count with no query is a match all one
+            countResponse = client1.prepareCount("test").execute().actionGet();
+            assertThat("Failures " + countResponse.shardFailures(), countResponse.shardFailures().size(), equalTo(0));
+            assertThat(countResponse.count(), equalTo(2l));
+            assertThat(countResponse.successfulShards(), equalTo(5));
+            assertThat(countResponse.failedShards(), equalTo(0));
         }
 
         logger.info("Delete by query");