Strawmyers brought this up offline. We simply cannot set the default search interval to one year or 5 years - each search is a set of queries on the database over many millions of records and some queries lock tables, so while you and 3 friends get your search results, the site is unusable. This is because most people just accept the default!

I will try to implement a more meaningful default, say 3 to 6 months. It is incumbent upon the Searcher, though, to always select the proper criteria; and extend the date range if 3 or 6 months (or whatever we set it at) is not adequate.