Was hältst du von

I understand this sentence mean “What do you think of..” but I have not seen it being used very often.
How often is it to use this word when asking what people think about something? Personally, it is more likely I would use “denken” when asking such question to someone.
 

Hallo RexV!

Was hältst du von... is a very commonly used construction among German speakers. You might have to check a corpus of some sort to see the exact difference in usage between this and Wie denkst du über... but in my personal experience, I would use and would expect to hear the former.

Note that one common and natural question to ask someone's opinion with denken is simply the complete sentence Was denkst du?

Hoping this is helpful,

Liss

Thank you very much!

What would be the translation of “Was hältst du von..” literally?

I was trying to search for the word “hältst” but ended up with “halten” which did not make too much sense for me “https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/german-english/halten”
 

As you have found, the primary meaning of halten is to hold, but a secondary meaning is to think, consider, regard. (Langenscheidt dictionary)
We have something a bit similar in English, - "to hold and opinion".