The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for updating an index and sequencing search results based on the updated index in a terminal. The method comprises: retrieving whether there is any modification in a file; if there is any modification in the file, performing an increment index the modified file to generate new index file, wherein the increment index includes a number of times that the modified file is selected historically; merging the new index file into the original index file; obtaining key words input by the user; querying the search results related to the key words, sequencing the search results according to the relevance between the search results and the key words and the number of times that the modified file is selected historically and displaying the sequenced search results to the user. By the present invention, the user experience of the mobile terminal is improved.