A learning-to-rank method based on reinforcement learning, including obtaining, by a server, a historical search word, and obtaining M documents corresponding to the historical search word; ranking, by the server, the M documents to obtain a target document ranking list; obtaining, by the server, a ranking effect evaluation value of the target document ranking list; using, by the server, the historical search word, the M documents, the target document ranking list, and the ranking effect evaluation value as a training sample, and adding the training sample into a training sample set.