without more details, all i can offer is an example:

in this case, I've wrapped the counting sql with another query to get me the isnull of the count.

SELECT ISNULL(CNT,0) As MatchingRecords FROM

(SELECT

COUNT(*) AS CNT

FROM SYSOBJECTS

WHERE 1=2 --CONDITION WILL NEVER FIND RECORDS

) X

the other thing to do is to use a SUM and CASE to calculate the count:

SELECT

SUM(CASE WHEN xtype IN ('U') THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS TableCount,

SUM(CASE WHEN xtype IN ('V') THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS ViewCount,

SUM(CASE WHEN xtype IN ('P') THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS ProcCount,

SUM(CASE WHEN xtype IN ('FN','TF') THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS FuncCount,

SUM(CASE WHEN xtype IN ('bananas') THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS WierdCount --CONDITION WILL NEVER FIND RECORDS

FROM SYSOBJECTS