I have a similar desire but across all search results, so my default search engine is a custom one: Google (Within Last Year). This has the same effect as when

I have a similar desire but across all search results, so my default search engine is a custom one: Google (Within Last Year). This has the same effect as when you click 'Tools' and select a date restriction, but automatically applies it to default searches. You can add this to Chrome by going to Settings -> Manage search engines -> Add. Name it 'Google (Within Last Year)' and make the Query URL 'http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=qdr:y&tbo=1 http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=qdr:y&tbo=1'. Then set it as the default. This filters out of date and usually irrelevant search results across the web. You can override it manually from the 'Past year' dropdown if the results are not extensive enough, which I do maybe 5% of the time.