To effectively track referral traffic in Google Analytics, including purchased referral traffic, follow these detailed steps:

1. Access Google Analytics: Log in to your Google Analytics account and select the website property you want to track referral traffic for.
2. Navigate to the Referral Traffic Report: From the left-hand menu, click on "Acquisition" to expand the menu options, then select "All Traffic" and "Referrals." This will take you to the Referral Traffic report, where you can analyze traffic from external sources.
3. View Referral Traffic Data: In the Referral Traffic report, you'll find a list of referral sources along with metrics such as sessions, users, bounce rate, and more. Take note of the sources that are driving the most traffic to your site, including any sources from which you've purchased referral traffic.
4. Set up Campaign Tracking Parameters (UTM Parameters): To track specific marketing campaigns or promotions that drive referral traffic, use campaign tracking parameters, also known as UTM parameters. These parameters provide additional information about the source, medium, campaign, and other relevant details.
5. Create UTM-tagged URLs for Purchased Traffic: If you're buying referral traffic, it's essential to use UTM-tagged URLs to track the performance of your campaigns accurately. Use the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder tool or third-party tools to create UTM-tagged URLs for your purchased referral traffic campaigns.
6. Monitor Campaign Performance: Once you've set up UTM-tagged URLs for your purchased traffic campaigns, monitor their performance in Google Analytics. Navigate to the "Acquisition" > "Campaigns" > "All Campaigns" report to view data for your tracked campaigns. Here, you can analyze metrics such as sessions, users, conversion rates, and more for each campaign.
7. Analyze Referral Traffic Quality: Evaluate the quality of referral traffic by examining metrics such as bounce rate, session duration, and conversion rates. Determine whether the purchased referral traffic is driving engaged visitors who are likely to convert or if adjustments need to be made to your campaign strategy.
8. Optimize Campaigns and Referral Sources: Use insights from Google Analytics to optimize your purchased referral traffic campaigns. Identify top-performing referral sources and campaigns, as well as any underperforming ones that may need adjustments or reevaluation. Experiment with different targeting options, ad formats, and messaging to improve campaign performance.
9. Track Social Media Referrals: In addition to tracking general referral traffic, monitor traffic from social media platforms separately. Google Analytics automatically categorizes traffic from social networks, allowing you to analyze the performance of your social media marketing efforts and any purchased social media referral traffic.

By following these steps and leveraging the insights provided by Google Analytics, you can effectively track and analyze referral traffic, including any traffic that you've purchased. This data-driven approach allows you to optimize your marketing efforts, maximize the ROI of your campaigns, and drive targeted traffic to your website.