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="KaitlynnSchrum549" snippet="…. Even so, lower wages will just make people&#039;s debts even harder to repay, &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; they are likely to cut their own spending even more, or stop repaying their&#10;" size="5951" wordcount="979" timestamp="2012-02-24T15:59:02Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>