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="Backup" snippet="When a user account or project expires all relevant data, &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; user and project data, is archived. The archieving first goes to disk stora&#10;" size="3309" wordcount="557" timestamp="2022-05-19T15:06:24Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Jwa" snippet="...of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt;, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;Aha!!&#10;" size="27849" wordcount="4175" timestamp="2015-10-12T08:14:07Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Gitolite" snippet="...roup in another group definition; the values will be expanded right there (&lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; later additions will not appear in the second group).&#10;" size="11657" wordcount="1856" timestamp="2018-10-31T17:21:33Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>