It stands 1.6 metres tall on a north-facing slope of a low rise, set within undulating grassland, irregular in shape and pocked across its surface with small depressions worn in over an unknowable span of time. The stone is sandstone, which weathers relatively readily, and those hollows are most likely the work of erosion rather than any human hand. There is no inscription, no obvious geometry, no folklore attached in any surviving record. It simply stands.

Standing stones are among the most enigmatic survivals in the Irish landscape. Erected mostly during the Bronze Age, though sometimes earlier or later, they resist easy interpretation: some may have marked boundaries or routeways, others may have had ritual or funerary functions, and many almost certainly served purposes we can no longer recover. What can be said of the Cooladooaun stone is that it was not placed in isolation from other human activity. About 135 metres to the north-west lies a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead, usually circular and bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. The proximity of the two monuments does not necessarily indicate that they were contemporary or functionally linked, but it does suggest that this particular patch of ground in north Galway was, at various points across a very long stretch of time, considered worth occupying and worth marking.