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="ALE Tag Classes" snippet="...ld, and the &amp;lt;code&amp;gt;userBank&amp;lt;/code&amp;gt; field.  It is important to note that the &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; of the field depends on the type of tag that is reporting the data.  For ex&#10;" size="9669" wordcount="1630" timestamp="2010-11-26T19:43:44Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Reader Framework" snippet="...elf what the session states mean for that reader.  For the TCPSession, the &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; is as follows: When a session if first created, it is in the Created State.&#10;" size="4894" wordcount="758" timestamp="2009-05-18T16:43:14Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>