Is Google Page Rank Dead ?

PageRank still definitely matters. Relevance + PageRank + Contextual = the perfect backlink. One of the biggest reasons that Google still frowns selling links that pass PageRank is because it still works incredibly well in terms of ranking a website, and they don't want people to manipulate their search algorithm.

With that said, Google hasn't updated their toolbar PageRank (what the public can see) since February 2013. There's a lot of speculation as to why, and they haven't officially addressed it either. Some people say, as mentioned above, that they are waiting for some of the Panda/Penguin changes to settle down, and other people think it's a way for them to discourage blog networks and high PR linking.

Regardless of the lack of change, you can still get a rough idea of PageRank or authority by looking at a site's backlinks and the PageRank of those links. You can use other figures like the Moz DA/PA or Majestic Trustflow, but honestly these tools just aggregate the PageRank values and other linking domains, and then plug this info into and algorithm to come up with these proprietary figures. Once you understand how to quickly analyze a site's backlink profile yourself, you'll be much better off judging authority manuall.

Finally, don't buy into the hype that "social metrics" are the new PageRank or anything like that...they are still a small portion of the ranking algorithm, it's just that we can't see the current PR values. No one is ranking for competitive terms with social shares, or any of that nonsense.

Hope that helps!