Computer-implemented methods and systems of determining semantic place data include receiving a plurality of location data reports from a plurality of mobile devices, partitioning them into localized segments, and estimating a geographic region bucket for each segment. For clustering canopies of localized segments identified as satisfying a potential geographic overlap characterization, an overlap score is calculated that correlates the overlap among actual geographic regions covered by movement of the mobile devices generating the localized segments in that given clustering canopy. A data structure that provides a hierarchical clustering configuration of the localized segments in each geographic region bucket is generated from the determined overlap scores. Additional semantic data for nodes in the data structure can also be provided.