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="Commands" snippet="...mmand id. Programmatically, commands are referenced by a short int opcode, &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; that commands are limited to at most 2&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;15&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;-1 (32767). With the exc&#10;" size="15677" wordcount="2023" timestamp="2015-02-15T16:41:45Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Release 0.8.2" snippet="*All Shipwrecked Cargo in the procedural world are &#039;one use&#039; per account. &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;Meaning&lt;/span&gt; that a Shipwrecked Cargo item will disappear for all characters on an accou&#10;" size="97632" wordcount="12736" timestamp="2016-08-13T03:37:31Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>