Disclosed by the present invention are a method, a network side device and a terminal for indicating a pilot precoding mode, wherein the method comprises: The network side device assigns at least one group of pilots to the terminal, wherein each group of pilots comprises at least one pilot. The network side device determines pilot precoding indication information for the at least one group of pilots, wherein the pilot precoding indication information is used to characterize whether each pilot in each group of pilots uses the same precoding matrix. The network side device sends the at least one group of pilots and the pilot precoding indication information to the terminal. The present invention may solve the technical problem not disclosed in prior art of a solution for how a base station or a terminal specifically indicates a pilot precoding mode, so as to improve the control efficiency of a network side device.