You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <search>
      <p ns="0" title="Coders at Work" snippet="When asked about UML, ??? states that it is a system that even puts different &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; whether boxes have pointy or round corners. Before I found that in the book&#10;" size="1146" wordcount="189" timestamp="2014-01-19T19:33:24Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>