Something I have been wanting a LONG time has been the ability to set my google searches to default to Past Year. Since I do a lot of software related searches, results from 5 years ago are usually irrelevant.

I did a search on the structure of google search urls and found this post: http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2007/01/30/google-search-urls-revealed-or-how-to-create-your-own-search-url/

Here’s how to set up Chrome to use the past year as your default search range:

1. Go to settings.
2. Under the Search heading, click the Manage Search Engines… button.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page, so you see the 3 fields for entering your own search engine.
4. Put these in the three fields: (view the UPDATE below to simplify the third field)

   1. GoogleYear

   2. search.google.com

   3. {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&as_qdr=y&{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}ie={inputEncoding}

5. Click the “Make default” button that appears at the end of the row you just made.
6. Click DONE and you’re set. Now your omnibox will always default search results to the past year unless you change it the usual way from the Search Tools at the top of the results page.

For other browsers, you can do something similar with a bookmark to the following: http://www.google.com/search?as_qdr=y or by setting up a custom search engine similarly.

Enjoy!

UPDATE

There is a much simpler url you can use now. Try using this in field 3:

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=qdr:y&q=%s

Replace the y (for year) with d for day, w for week or m for month if you prefer a different range. Thanks Kusa for the comment that pointed this out!