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="Bed Bugs in the News" snippet="...a person to be bitten 500 times in a single night.  Bed bugs are nocturnal &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; that they sleep during the day and pray on us at night feeding on our flesh&#10;" size="2596" wordcount="456" timestamp="2015-02-13T17:25:42Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>