Soil is one of the most important reservoirs of virus genetic diversity. Due to the limitation of currently-available method for isolating and cultivating soil microorganisms, the overall diversity and function of the soil viruses remain largely unknown. Thanks to the development in the viral metagenome analysis, it is possible to directly obtain viromes from soil samples through high throughput sequencing, splicing assemble, ORF prediction, and protein annotation, which greatly enrich the understanding of soil viral functions. This review briefly summarizes the analytical methods that are extensively used in the soil virus metagenomic studies, including soil virus DNA extraction, sequencing and virus identification, functional gene annotation and etc. Meanwhile, the research progress in the phage genomes harbored in the culturable bacterial strains, and the viral metagenomes in terrestrial ecosystems were reviewed as well. This work highlights the significance of integrating currently-available virus analytical techniques, building standard viral analysis procedures, and optimizing the virus relevant databases.