• ISD:2005  -->  Finds documents published in 2005.
• ISD:03/06/2001 --> Finds documents published on the specific date of March 6, 2001.
• ISD:2001/03/06 --> The same search as above, but with a different date format.  It still finds documents published on March 6, 2001.
• ISD:[2000 to 2014] -->  Finds documents published any time from 2000 to 2014, inclusive of the end points.
• ISD:[1970 to NOW] -->  Finds documents published anytime from 1970 to today's date (also known as whatever day you run the search).
• ISD:[NOW-10YEARS to NOW] -->  Finds documents published within the last 10 years from today's date.
• ISD:[NOW-18MONTHS to NOW]  -->  Finds documents published within the last 18 months from today's date.
• ISD:[NOW-1000DAYS to NOW-1YEAR]  -->  Silly query showing how you can mix days and years in the same query.  Although this does not read well, you can use most any mixture of time if you want.

About Range Queries:

All date fields support Range Queries.  Range Queries let you search for patents that fall within specific date ranges.

Use square brackets so that the end points are inclusive.  Range Queries support curly brackets which exclude the endpoints, but they are generally not recommended since it is better to create inclusive queries.  This is because they read more naturally to most users.  For instance, the following two queries are the same:

ISD:[2010 to 2012]

ISD:{2009 to 2013}

Both of the above examples find documents published in 2010, 2011, and 2012.  However, the first example is more natural.

Assume it's March of 2015 and I decide to run the following simple query:

ISD:[2000 to NOW]

Assume I then decide to chart my results by publication date.  I then use the "Split by Collection" and select the column chart.  Notice that US applications were first published in 2001.