I believe they have to do with the frequency that a spawn was discovered there. From my experience, it sems that the white squares show spawns that seem to appear repetitively in one place, a clump of grey squares shows a spawn that reappears randomly over an area, and a white square with a yellow circle is a spawn that always reappears exactly in the same place. Someone with more experience may be able to speak to this better, but it seems to me that the number of spawns per hour is related more to the level of the vein than to the location - copper veins seem to respawn very fast, while mithril (the highest I am so far) spawn much slower. Silver, gold, and possibly truesilver seem to be rare spawns of a vein which would usually be (respectively) tin, iron, or mithril.