The well-publicized “Who Blew Up WWE Chairman Mr. McMahon?” story line has boosted the ratings for Raw, at least initially. Monday’s episode reportedly drew a 4.2 rating, an increase over last week’s 3.8.

The over-the-top angle also has resulted in a huge increase in traffic for wwe.com. As reported on cnbc.com, the total page views for wwe.com on June 12, the day after McMahon’s limo exploded on Raw, were 36.8 million, with two million daily unique visitors. That’s compared to the Web site’s three-month average of 14.3 million page views and one million unique visitors.

Although the angle created some confusion at first, I think almost everyone now realizes that the real-life Vince McMahon is alive and well. So now that the initial curiosity over his “death” has subsided, it will be interesting to see if WWE can keep people watching as the story line unfolds.