I want to always have Google Search find results within the last year. Without having to go to Advanced, is there a way to have it do this all the time?

There might be a way of doing if you look at the URL that Google directs to after you have advanced searched. I'm not sure how it works with result time-range, but you can see that if you do an advanced search with results from the last day, you see qdr:d in the URL, and qdr:y if you search over the last year.

With image searching, you can specify :imagesize=1024x768 into the search bar to restrict the results, so you may be able to achieve the same with the date range. Try comparing the results of your usual advanced search with a normal search but appending :qdr=y or something similar.

If it doesn't work.. sorry, I tried :)