The site was not discovered by excavation or fieldwork in the conventional sense, but by scrutinising satellite imagery; three researchers, Jean-Charles Caillère, Simon Dowling, and Edward O'Riordan, each independently identified it as a cropmark on Google Earth Pro imagery captured on 14 July 2018. A cropmark appears when buried archaeological features, such as filled ditches or compacted soil, cause the vegetation above them to grow differently from the surrounding ground, producing patterns that are invisible at eye level but legible from the air.

What the imagery revealed is a roughly circular enclosure, approximately 30 metres across on its north-south axis and 32 metres east to west. Around it, and concentric with at least the western, northern, and north-eastern sectors, there are traces of an outer fosse, a ditch, set about 7 metres out from the inner one. This outer feature is shallower and narrower than the inner fosse, suggesting it may have served a secondary or supplementary function rather than being a principal boundary in its own right. Enclosures of this general type are common across the Irish landscape and often represent the remains of early medieval ringforts, domestic settlements surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, though without excavation the date and precise character of the Ballycocksoost example remain open questions.