is “over the past years” a natural sounding expression?

Question

I have heard "over the past few years" or "over past years", but I just read a document that said "X, Y and Z have been beneficial over the past years". This strikes me as wrong, but I found the expression used here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-trade-performance-over-the-past-years-trade-and-investment-analytical-papers-topic-3-of-18

Am I wrong and the phrase is fine?

Answer 1

Of the three, "over past years" sounds the most odd, and least likely to be used. Google ngram bears this out:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Over+past+years%2Cover+the+past+years%2Cover+the+past+few+years&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1940&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2COver%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bover%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOver%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cover%20the%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bover%20the%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOver%20the%20past%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cover%20the%20past%20few%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bover%20the%20past%20few%20years%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BOver%20the%20past%20few%20years%3B%2Cc0