Meta Title Not Displaying Correctly in Search

Hi,

I'm having some trouble with my Meta title and the way it's showing in search. In our website code and in the Yoast plugin, the meta title is displayed as follows:

Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK | Brand Name

Up until last week, search was displaying an incorrect Meta of:

Brand Name: Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK

Last week, the Meta title changed to be correct and we saw a 3 point increase in search rankings, however this morning it has changed back to the incorrect Meta title. I have checked that Google is crawling the Meta title correctly and can confirm that it is crawling Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK | Brand Name but showing Brand Name: Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK in search.

Is there anywhere else that Google could be taking this incorrect Meta title from?

Thank you in advance!


TL;DR

Google should be showing Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK | Brand Name
Google is showing Brand Name: Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 | UK
Last week it was showing correctly and we saw a 3pt increase. It's now changed back to incorrect Meta. How do we ensure it is showing correctly in search?

I had this happen before and it ended up being a plugin conflicting with Yoast. In my case, it was a plugin called Plugin Organizer. Perhaps check and see if a plugin could possibly interfere with your page.

Google seems to do this a lot. Depending on the search query, Google will generate their own titles, even if theirs is worse.

Had to explain this to many clients. If your source code has a different title tag than what is shown (fetch and render, or check google cache to make sure no backend plugins are modifying the title), then it's Google. :\