Together with nearby situated M99 and M100, M98 was discovered on March 15, 1781 by Pierre Méchain. Charles Messier measured its position and cataloged it on April 13, 1781, immediately before finishing the third, final published edition of his catalog, and remarks that M98 is the faintest of these three.

M98 is one of the more difficultly observable Messier galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, although it is situated in constellation Coma.

M98 is nearly edge-on and displays a chaotic, diffuse disk, containing some blue regions of newly formed stars, and a huge quantity of occulting dust, which reddens considerably the light of the central small but bright nucleus.

Edge-on spiral galaxy M98 can be best located by starting from the 5th mag star 6 Comae Berenices, which is east of M98.