A positioning method, comprising: obtaining (S101, S201), by a terminal device, a cell identity obtained by the terminal from a base station at a current time, or a network identifier such as a basic service set identifier of a wireless network access point that is obtained by the terminal at a current time, as a target network identifier; querying, by the terminal device, according to the target network identifier, whether positioning information about a region to which the target network identifier belongs is stored locally on the terminal device, and if the positioning information about the region is not stored, downloading the positioning information about the region from a server to the terminal device, wherein the positioning information about the region comprises geographical location information corresponding to each of multiple network identifiers that the region has, and the multiple network identifiers are used to represent multiple network devices in the region; and when a positioning request is received by the terminal device, obtaining (S107, S213), by the terminal device, from the locally stored positioning information about the region, geographical location information corresponding to the target network identifier, characterized in that the querying, according to the target network identifier, whether positioning information about a region to which the target network identifier belongs is stored locally, comprises: requesting to obtain, by the terminal device, from the server, the region to which the target network identifier belongs, and then querying, according to the region returned by the server, whether the positioning information about the region is stored locally, wherein when the query result is yes, it indicates that the positioning information about the region is stored locally, whereas when the query result is no, it indicates that the positioning information about the region is not stored locally. obtaining (S101, S201), by a terminal device, a cell identity obtained by the terminal from a base station at a current time, or a network identifier such as a basic service set identifier of a wireless network access point that is obtained by the terminal at a current time, as a target network identifier; querying, by the terminal device, according to the target network identifier, whether positioning information about a region to which the target network identifier belongs is stored locally on the terminal device, and if the positioning information about the region is not stored, downloading the positioning information about the region from a server to the terminal device, wherein the positioning information about the region comprises geographical location information corresponding to each of multiple network identifiers that the region has, and the multiple network identifiers are used to represent multiple network devices in the region; and when a positioning request is received by the terminal device, obtaining (S107, S213), by the terminal device, from the locally stored positioning information about the region, geographical location information corresponding to the target network identifier, characterized in that the querying, according to the target network identifier, whether positioning information about a region to which the target network identifier belongs is stored locally, comprises: requesting to obtain, by the terminal device, from the server, the region to which the target network identifier belongs, and then querying, according to the region returned by the server, whether the positioning information about the region is stored locally, wherein when the query result is yes, it indicates that the positioning information about the region is stored locally, whereas when the query result is no, it indicates that the positioning information about the region is not stored locally.