I know that I can write my sentence as:
The study of web analytic has been studied over the past few years.
However, I want to use the word "recently": So I rewrite my sentence as:
The study of web analytic has been studied over the recent years.
Does the 2nd sentence sound correct to an English speaker?
Best Answer
Both sentences have a couple of problems. "Web analytic" must be pluralized as "web analytics", because "analytic" by itself is just an adjective, and the noun form comes (as far as I can tell) from the use of multiple methods of analysis in the field, even though the resulting noun phrase is not plural. Also, repeating "study" sounds awkward.
The second sentence has the further problem that "over the recent years" is considerably less idiomatic than "over the past few years" or "in recent years".
Instead, your sentence should read something like this:
If you want to be clearer to people that don't necessarily know "web analytics" is the name of a field of study, use this: