I did a quick search for this but didn't find results that were directly pertaining to my dilemma so I come to you humbly asking for help.

My group is trying to find someone who escaped a mental hospital. One of their options was to use some blood found at the crime scene as a Material Link to cast a Ritual Detect Individual spell. The problem that is being discussed is Targeting vs. Range. The material link allows the targeting of the subject without having to use a spotter to find him. So the group is in agreement that the Ritual will successfully target the owner of the blood sample. Where we are really having a problem is the range of the spell itself. As the GM I know the subject is over 12 miles away from where the ritual is being cast so the Range of the Detect Individual is HUGE. Going by RAW it would have to be a Force 85 extended spell to be successful.

Now to reduce the ridiculously high numbers I House Ruled the Range Formula for Ritual Detection magic to Force X Combined Ritual Caster Magic X 100 meters. This is a change from RAW which is listed as Force X Magic (leader only) in meters or x10 if extended version of spell which adds +2 to the Drain Value.

The opposing sides of the argument are this:

1) With the modified version of Range rules, the Force would have to be overcast to 10 to make the distance to the subject. This ultimately would require a Drain Resist vs. 6 Physical damage upon completion.

2) The Material Link allows the Spell to automatically find the target so there is really no need to determine a Force for the Ritual casting.

Now I surmise that not only does the Force be required due to range, but also for the ability of the subject to detect the casting of the Ritual. The topic came up also why not using a spirit to track the subject while the Ritual is being cast just like a spotter would normally do. While I admit that could be done and would work provided the spirit was able to find the subject during the casting of the Ritual. But if the spirit was unable to find the subject, everything would fall back on the success of the spell.

So my question is this: In the above situation is the Material Link an automatic connection despite the distance between the Ritual and the subject or is the distance subject to the Range rules of Detection Magic?

if you use a detect individual spell, you don't need a ritual at all. material links don't work like that. you use a ritual to basically link to the target. that link is visible in the astral. so you just follow the link from the origin point to the destination, while dealing with all the astral barriers in between (if any).

Ok but in that example the spirit spotter doing the tracking or the astral mage doing the tracking would have a limited time based on the material link sample before it goes bad. In this case we determined 5 hours (same as the casting time of the Ritual). So the spotter would get 5 rolls (1/hour) to meet the threshold of the tracking attempt. If that failed they no longer have a material link.

I'm pretty sure page 28 of Street Magic says the Material Link works exactly like that. It allows the Ritual casters to not need a spotter to cast the ritual...for cases where the location of the subject is unknown or inaccessible.

They have a link ( the blood) so they can just use astral tracking, which is likely easier to pull off than casting a force 10 spell. Honestly though, since their goal is to just find the person, they could cast anything in a ritual and use the active link to track the person's location. Cast Resist Pain or Heal and just follow the link. If they have enough aura info on the person they could also send a spirit to find him using its Search power too. The only hiccup with that is going to be any wards in the way. The Search power uses an interval of 10 minutes per test as well, making this the faster option.
The other problem is since you have determined the blood sample is only viable to 5 hours, their magician needs to have a magic of at least 7 to pull off the ritual in time. The base time for a ritual is 12-magic in hours (pg 185 SR4A) but I'm guessing they have already considered this factor from your description.

Yes, the leader of the Ritual (an NPC) has a magic of 7. That part was by design on my part. Also by design on my part is that all the NPC's taking part in the Ritual have the same spell list as the PC by default. If the runners decided to throw some nuyen at the situation I would consider allowing the NPC's to have a spell the runners don't have access to...But that isn't actually part of the situation right now.

I considered the option to use a spotter to track the subject during the Ritual, but if they were unsuccessful the blood sample would be lost as well as the Ritual if that were not successful either. Thank you, I completely missed the Search Power which is nice. Massive reduction in time it takes to track (10min vs 1 hour normal).