Difference to Search Engine Query Strings VS Direct Traversal

Does using Query Strings lower ranking?

[Demaestro]

We have been dicussing, in our company if we should do away with using query strings to pass arguments to pages who's content is dynamically generated, depending on arguments passed through the query string.

We are thinking of replacing a lot of the logic we have in place to use a Direct Traversal linking system that uses some backend python code to pass arguments to dynamic pages and to give the dynamic page to the illusion of being a dedicated page rather than a dynamic one.

The only reason we would have for undertaking such a change to our code base is to help increase rankings with our client sites.

Does using query strings really hurt with rankings?

I know Google includes query strings when crawling a site, but does the fact it has to use the query string impact the ranking negitivally?

Also Google is not the only web indexer and we would like to play nice with all web crawlers.

Any input on this matter would be greatly appriciated.