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="Trabant 601 Universal" snippet="The white non-jalopy Trabant 601 Universal requires an extra door (&lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; it needs 2 total doors).&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&#10;" size="1070" wordcount="178" timestamp="2016-04-12T15:02:30Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>