How long until PR bounces back?

[wheel]

I've got an old blog I was using for not much of anything. I built some content and PR and let is sit. Then I did some paid blog posts on it. That resulted in a PR drop (the site should probably be a pr4, but is actually a 0).

After a year or so I stripped off the paid posts and let it sit again (still no plans for the site). Eventually, the PR came back.

However a dbase restore returned the paid posts back again - and that brought about a second PR drop back down to 0 before I got the old posts wiped off again.

Any idea on when the PR might bounch back? Anyone seen a general timeframe for this to happen?

Or should I just start building the site, drive some new links to it, and hope that makes things work. That's what I'm tempted to do, but am unsure if the penalty applied here goes deeper than the display PR.

[Receptional Andy]

but am unsure if the penalty applied here goes deeper than the display PR

Were your rankings and traffic affected?

The problem with predictions about toolbar PR is that it isn't updated all that frequently, and in some cases seems to be used as a tool to inform webmasters of possible wrong-doing. Who knows when they update those criteria?

If you lost traffic and got it back, you can forget about toolbar PR. If you don't have a measure like traffic or rankings, then IMO you should try to acquire some - if you encounter unreasonable difficulty, then you may have a penalty ;)