<p>There are many measures to compare top k (ranked) lists. Some very trivial to compute making several simplifying assumptions, others not so trivial but are more rigorous in their evaluation of rank similarity between lists. A recent paper I came across that deals with this problem in a statistically meaningful way, using concepts from information theory and data compression: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0110" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0110</a></p>
How to compare ranked lists
<p>I have two lists of ranked items. Each item has an rank and an associated score. 
The score has decided the rank. The two lists can contains (and usually do) different items, that is their intersection can be empty. I need measures to compare such rankings. 
Are there well-known algorithms  (in literature or real-world systems) to do so ? 
The measure of distance should take into account the scores as well as the ranks of the items. </p>